In state’s civil war, the South is gaining on the North

Michael J. Mishak

Sunday, Feb. 18, 2007 | 7:32 a.m.

U.S. 95 AT THE CLARK COUNTY LINE - Beyond the bright lights of the Las Vegas Strip, U.S. 95 snakes its way northwest toward Indian Springs, the first of about a dozen lonely towns on the way to Reno.

As you flash past the RV park and Creech Air Force Base, you approach a battle line, indistinguishable in the vast desert expanse, marked only by a few broken bottles, a sign and a burnt Judds cassette.

Cross it and you have left Clark County and entered the other Nevada, the North, land of the free and home of what many believe is the state's third major political party. Call it the Northern alliance. Its members are elected officials who care less about "Republican" and "Democrat" than they do about the North's motto: Us v. Vegas.

"It's a tale of two cities and two different worlds," said Fred Lokken, professor of political science at Truckee Meadows Community College. "We're talking different languages."

That North-South divide shaped Silver State politics for nearly half a century, often to the detriment of the South. The North had the power even if the South had the population because Las Vegas clung to the quaint notions of party politics, dividing its clout on statewide issues.

The Clark County delegation, in fact, has held veto-proof majorities in both houses of the Legislature for some time, with 14 of 21 Senate seats and 28 of 42 in the Assembly. But the North approaches each session with a united front, led by Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, the veteran Republican lawmaker from Reno who also heads the powerful Senate Finance Committee. Raggio's legendary legislative skill has benefited Washoe County and siphoned more than a few Southern votes over the years.

Now, it may be payback time.

State legislators insist that the North-South divide all but disappeared more than a decade ago. Yet this year, fissures are spreading. Las Vegas' enormous appetite for water from the North, billions of dollars for new roads, and parity in education funding threaten to split the state again.

Only now, the dynamic has changed in the South. Call it the Southern alliance - between Republicans and Democrats.

"This session we'll see whether the South has clout," said Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus. "There's always a lag time between when you get the numbers and when you get the power."

Gov. Jim Gibbons, who represented Northern and rural Nevada for a decade in Congress, has seen signs of the potential split. "We must not allow the interest of one part of the state to override the concerns of another," he said in his inaugural address. "Some would call that politics. I would call it turning our backs on history, for any great society that pits one group against another is bound to fail."

Nevada has been controlled by Northern interests from its very beginnings as a state.

First came mining. The Comstock Lode and Virginia City kicked things off, followed by the Tonopah-Goldfield boom, which was followed by Reno and its rising tourism trade.

Before the federal government required the state to redivide its legislative districts in the 1960s, when Las Vegas emerged as the state's dominant population center, each county had one state senator. Then, in 1971, Clark County gained majority status in both houses of the state Legislature, sharply shifting - at least in theory - the power base to the South.

"There was some anxiety and resentment," said Richard Bryan, who has served as Nevada's attorney general, governor and U.S. senator.

Nevada historian Michael Green compared the growing rift to the Civil War. "Lee surrendered to Grant," he said. "That doesn't mean the South was convinced it lost."

As Las Vegas continued to grow through the 1970s and '80s, the state's formulas for distributing public dollars, set by Northern legislators, remained largely the same. The North got a disproportionate share of the treasury.

The North built up seniority and captured state leadership posts, while the South suffered constant turnover in the Legislature, often because of the logistical headache Carson City presents for Las Vegas lawmakers. (In those days, Southwest Airlines didn't have 13 flights a day to Reno.)

Despite that reality, Northern attitudes toward the South persisted.

"The perception is that Clark County gets everything," Bryan said. "I don't think that's a fair evaluation, but it's the perception."

Things came to a head in 1991, when Southern Nevada legislators finally flexed their muscle and voted as a bloc to pass the so-called "fair share" bill.

Under a 1981 sales tax formula, Washoe County had received nearly $100 million in sales taxes collected in other counties - largely because of a county assessor's accounting error. At the same time, Clark County sent more than $107 million to other parts of the state.

(Hence Titus' infamous characterization of Washoe County as a "sponge," a comment that Gibbons used against her in the race for governor.)

The "fair share" bill, sponsored by then-Assemblywoman Myrna Williams, corrected the formula and directed Washoe County to return some of the money.

After the Legislature approved the bill, Williams received death threats. Security guards were assigned to her office in the capitol.

"In the North, it sent us reeling," said Lokken, the Truckee Meadows political scientist.

Pete Ernaut, a veteran Republican consultant, said the "fair share" debate marked the most bitter chapter in the history of the North-South divide. "That fight was so bad that nobody wants to get into that again," he said. "I think that experience tempered people."

Subsequent flare-ups, while less intense, have centered on disparate funding for transportation and education:

But the project stalled last year after the original contractor raised safety concerns about the 300-foot-tall bridge.

The state canceled the contract, paid the construction firm about $50 million for work completed, and later approved nearly $400 million to hire another firm to finish the job. But the project, the largest in Nevada history, is $64 million over budget and more than $100 million beyond original estimates.

For now, the South considers the Galena Creek Bridge project a boondoggle that siphons money from traffic-choked Clark County.

But instead of making amends, Gibbons has dismissed the work of a task force that identified not only a $3.8 billion deficit in transportation funding for critical projects, such as widening portions of Interstate 15 and U.S. 95 in the Las Vegas Valley, but funding solutions as well.

Water is the newest issue in the divide. The Southern Nevada Water Authority is seeking state approval to pump ground water from the North to slake the South's thirst. Las Vegas will soon run dry, having squeezed the last drops out of the Colorado River.

If the state's top water engineer fails to approve the plan, get thee to a doorjamb. An earthquake is coming.

Beyond the prospect that those immediate issues will unite the South, larger forces at work do not bode well for the North's historical grip on power.

Term limits that take effect in 2010 will force many legislators into retirement, an especially dismal prospect for the North because seniority has kept many Northerners in power. Senate Majority Leader Raggio, for instance, was first elected in 1972.

Also, Clark County's population growth is inexorably tilting the state South. The South already is home to two of the state's three seats in the U.S. House. Growth trends, particularly in the South, show that the state will gain a fourth - and possibly a fifth - congressional seat after 2010.

Here's Titus again: "The North knows its swan song is coming. Once it loses its power, it will never get it back."

For the moment, however, most lawmakers are echoing Gibbons' call for unity.

Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley, D-Las Vegas, said Northern and Southern legislators are dedicated to working together.

"I think it's counterproductive when we have North-South wars," Buckley said. "We have to recognize that Nevada has some pretty unique challenges while also recognizing that every community has its own set of problems."

Sen. Dennis Nolan, R-Las Vegas, who heads the Senate Transportation Committee, said the Legislature, and particularly the Clark County delegation, would govern with an eye toward balance.

"With that power also comes the responsibility not to just take care of our own, but to shepherd the entire state," Nolan said.

Even Raggio, who once ran anti-Southern Nevada campaign ads, downplayed the North-South tension.

"From my position, this is one state. I make every attempt I can to avoid the issue of sectionalism," Raggio said. He paused. "Most of that talk seems to rise from the South."

Maybe he was referring to comments like those of Assemblyman Morse Arberry, D-North Las Vegas, chairman of the Assembly Ways and Means Committee. What's good for Clark County is good for the rest of the state, Arberry said.

"I can't say the relationship has been perfect, but legislators are coming around to realizing that growth in the populated areas is a necessity," Arberry said. "If that growth dies on the vine the state won't be able to survive."

That's more olive branch than slingshot, but it is a clear statement of a belief that may drive legislators once the budget rub begins in the months ahead.

As for how Titus and Arberry sound to Northern ears, Lokken said the words from Southern lawmakers are comforting.

"We're not going to get what we got in the past, and we shouldn't," he said. "We just don't want to be punished for our past sins.

"These will be really delicate times ahead."

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