Familiarity flows from small pool of state leaders

By Joe Schoenmann (contact)

Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Some moments of levity during the invitation-only Brookings Institution meeting at UNLV two weeks ago pointed to how interwoven the movers and shakers are in Southern Nevada.

During the introduction of speakers at the event, Rory Reid, the Democratic Clark County Commission chairman and son of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, quipped that he had gone to the same high school as John Ensign, Nevada’s Republican junior senator.

“John’s like a father to me,” the younger Reid said, and everyone laughed, because everyone got it.

When you’re among friends, you can josh a little before you get down to business.

And this was a group that knows the work to be done. The small pond in which they all grew up has become a “megapolitan” area with big-time problems. The Brookings event focused on the need to team up with other states in the southern Intermountain West — Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico — to work toward solving shared or related problems.

So is Nevada at a disadvantage at making that kind of cooperation work, given that a lot of our key people are part of a close-knit group? Are we as open as we would otherwise be to outside ideas? Or is the familiarity a major advantage, making it easier to get things done?

The answer may lie somewhere in the middle, says Jim Rogers, chancellor of Nevada’s public higher education system.

“That familiarity helps you in the initial introduction. But it doesn’t help you much after that because you don’t have a lot of people who helped with the complications of building large organizations, huge movements.”

Political consultant Terry Murphy sees it differently. Because this is a place where residents have almost all come from elsewhere, newcomers who are on the ball and earn some sweat equity are welcomed into the groups of people who get things done in the valley, she said.

They may not ever become part of the inner circle at the very top, but they’ll be able to get into the other echelons of the power structure easier than in many, if not most, other states.

Sure, you may see the same people calling the shots, but that’s because “you have people with long histories in the community who want to continue to help into the future,” Murphy added.

Guy Hobbs, an economic analyst and former Clark County manager, sees the sameness of faces at meetings as “a Darwin thing.”

“If they’re not actively contributing, if there’s not some measure of respect for their opinion, they just don’t end up being there over time,” Hobbs said.

They are all nice words. But one thing the elder Reid made clear: Actions are needed.

And in the case of the Brookings Institution report, the proof will also be in whether Las Vegas leaders are able to create an effective, well-funded lobbying group with other states that appeals and works continually on bringing Washington dollars to the Intermountain West.

Just two weeks later, it appears movement has begun, and the familiarity here appears to have helped speed things along.

On her own, Murphy began drafting an outline for an interstate organization. And Rogers, who wasn’t at the Brookings meeting, is planning to use his television stations in the five states of the Intermountain West to disseminate information about the Brookings Institution report.

If something comes of it, if Nevada and other Western states do decide to act as a team, the real challenge then becomes drawing from the leaders of those states the kind of familiarity and unified stance that some will credit for getting the Brookings’ ideas this far.