Friday, Nov. 30, 2007 | 7:15 a.m.
It's been a full week with Gov. Jim Gibbons continuing his routine of unfathomable appointments and a spat already breaking out in that Clark County Commission race for Chip Maxfield's seat:
Can they really be this inept? A Republican I know who has watched Nevada politics for decades describes the Gibbons administration as painting a "masterpiece of incompetence." The governor and his gang who couldn't appoint straight truly are flawless in their ability to set the bar lower as often as they can.
The latest folly by the folks who brought you (briefly) a Yucca Mountain proponent for a nuclear waste board and a subprime mortgage executive to oversee the mortgage lending division (among so many other questionable moves) was to select Joe Enge, a Carson City School Board member and public education critic, as the deputy director of the Energy Office.
Enge not only had no qualifications for the job, but he also has had some well-publicized run-ins with the law, including a recent claim of assault that could not be substantiated and a run-in with a fence with his car that was. The governor probably wasn't directly involved with the appointment - that job fell to Energy Czar Hattice Gecol, whom Gibbons appointed and then, in an interview, memorably didn't know her name and said she was from India. (She is from Turkey.)
But Gibbons surely had faith in Gecol to appoint Enge and discussed the appointment with her recently. Even though Enge has announced his resignation, Gibbons can't escape responsibility, especially because the department has become important, becoming enmeshed in the green-building fiscal fiasco.
At some point, someone has to step back and say that these are not isolated cases - the string of questionable appointments has been virtually unending - and wonder who is running the ship of state and wonder about the qualifications of the people who appointed (i.e., voted for) the governor.
"Masterpiece of incompetence." That's starting to seem generous.
The strip club hot button: It didn't take long for the G-Sting hangover to be felt in the race between Assemblywoman Valerie Weber and Las Vegas Councilman Larry Brown to succeed County Commissioner Chip Maxfield.
First Weber accused Brown on "Face to Face" of taking money from the Olympic Garden two years ago and then linked it to that $50,000 in corporate welfare from the city. Then, during a subsequent taping of "Face to Face," OG co-owner Dolores Eliades suggested Weber is a hypocrite because she took money from the strip club's founder, Pete Eliades.
Neither charge is exactly true, but both are close enough and could be a harbinger of just how contentious and brutal the race could become.
Here's what Weber said Monday: "It's just not appropriate to give public money to a strip club. It's just not. Besides that, we actually did the research to find out that Councilman Brown actually accepted a $5,000 contribution from the same Olympic Garden strip club in 2005. I just find that's inappropriate."
She was referring to a $5,000 contribution in February 2005 from Pete Eliades Enterprises to Brown. Now that's not exactly the Olympic Garden, but the office of that business is on the premises of the strip club. And Brown, like many people, surely knew Eliades owned the Olympic Garden.
Nevertheless, Dolores Eliades, who now owns the club with family members, protested the allegation and pointed out that Weber took money from Pete Eliades' cab company, Yellow Checker Star, and a bank in which her father is an investor.
"She took them (contributions) from my father's transportation company of which he's a partner, Yellow Checker Star," Dolores Eliades said on the program Thursday. "It's not a secret my father's an owner. And, from the Business Bank of Nevada, where my father's a major stockholder, which is also not a secret."
I'd have to say that few might have known of Pete Eliades' involvement in the bank, so that's a stretch. But his involvement in the cab business is well-known, although Weber claims she did not realize when she accepted $500 from Yellow Checker Star in July 2004 that a strip club owner was involved.
And Weber so wants to have clean hands so she can sully Brown with the strip club taint that remains redolent of G-Sting, she (so she said in an interview) will return the $500. More than three years later, that is.
This race is going to be worth watching. Mark my words.
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