Jon Ralston on two who know a different Kenny

Friday, July 20, 2007 | 7:22 a.m.

You have seen them in the newspaper or on television. They are always there, standing behind their friend, ex-Clark County Commissioner Erin Kenny.

Lynn Vertner and her daughter, Amanda, are doing just that and have been - literally and figuratively - since that day in late 2003 when the news broke that Kenny had made a deal with the federal government in the G-Sting case. Lynn remembers that day.

"I didn't believe it," she said in an interview Thursday. "I didn't think she was one of those commissioners. I called her. She told me, 'I did some things I shouldn't have done.' "

Kenny's gift for understatement notwithstanding - she was sentenced Wednesday to 30 months in prison for her role in the political corruption scandal - Lynn and Amanda have not wavered in their unflinching support for a woman they say changed their lives. Sitting down with them provides a window into how Kenny's closest friends have dealt with her fall - a combination of admirable loyalty, albeit blind at times, and outrage at how the media caricature of Kenny does not comport with the woman they know.

"They portrayed her as this money-grubbing mongrel, raking in the dough," Amanda lamented. "They say she is not remorseful. She most certainly is."

Ah, perhaps to them in private, but not to the public. The Vertners may be in a bit of denial, but they also know Kenny better than anyone who has written about her. And their loyalty also highlights how easy it is for us in the Fourth Estate - and we feed the public's cynicism - to see these all-too-human beings as good or evil, as if the language of analysis should be binary as opposed to nuanced.

The Vertners present a perspective refracted through their initial experience with Kenny five years ago as she prepared to try to climb another rung of her ladder of ambition by challenging Lt. Gov. Lorraine Hunt.

"I needed a job," Lynn recalled. Without asking any questions, Kenny told her, " ' Come on down, ' and Monday I had a job. She was so much fun, so down to earth."

Remembered Amanda: "She hired my Mom on the spot. And we were in a desperate financial situation."

The Vertners believe - or have convinced themselves - that Kenny found herself in a similar financial situation and that's why she began taking money under the table. Raising five kids and taking care of other family members who lived in Las Vegas took its toll, they say.

"We've been in those situations," Amanda said of herself and her single mom. "I can't say I wouldn't have done the same thing."

But, I posited, aren't there a lot of people who have five kids and relatives to care for who find a way to make it work without breaking the law, much less selling their public office? Did she have to live in a luxury home, send all of the kids to private school?

The Vertners agreed, but said they had never thought of their friend, their savior, really, as anything but giving. A few years ago, something happened between Lynn and Amanda - something cataclysmic neither wanted to discuss - and one person saved them.

"Erin was our lifeline," Amanda said. "She made sure I had food, shelter, a place to be."

Thus it's not hard to understand why the Vertners are standing behind Kenny and have for the past four years. As for the sentence, the Vertners believe, echoing Kenny attorney Frank Cremen's argument, that the former commissioner should not have been penalized so heavily because unlike the other G-Sting participants, she confessed and cooperated. "Compared to others who said they didn't do it, she admitted she was guilty," Lynn said. Both believe that the federal judge, Kent Dawson, could have been more sympathetic but was swayed by the media.

Not surprisingly, they are most outraged at the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which has run all manner of unflattering pictures of the woman they love and devoted reams of columns to pillorying Kenny.

"It's hateful," Lynn said. "It is hate."

How has Kenny reacted to the sentence and the prospect of going to prison?

"Devastation," Lynn said. "She's preparing her kids for it, but I don't know how you prepare for it."

Lynn candidly acknowledged that Kenny had something in common with the others in prison. "They all just thought they wouldn't get caught," she said. "If she (Kenny) could do it all over again, she wouldn't."

Or would she simply have done it differently? The Vertners probably don't even want to think about that.