For GOP, down-ticket weakness reflects lack of a strong leader

Sunday, June 20, 2010 | 2 a.m.

When a party doesn’t have a leader, you end up with candidates who charitably can be called outside the top tier. Take the Republican attorney general candidate. Travis Barrick, a lawyer for the past seven years who moved back to Nevada in 2007, raised $1,400 during the primary and won when the establishment-backed candidate was mired in a bar complaint.

The GOP candidate for secretary of state, Rob Lauer, meanwhile, faces a police investigation into an allegation he assaulted a 46-year-old GOP activist who has multiple sclerosis. She said he twisted her arm, spraining her wrists and possibly tearing her rotator cuff. He said he was showing her self-defense moves, and filed his own police report against her.

Gov. Jim Gibbons and Sen. John Ensign, as Nevada’s senior Republican elected officials, would normally pull off the role of party pooh-bah, lining up strong candidates for office and getting them donations to take on Democrats. Both Gibbons and Ensign, though, are scarred by scandal.

That’s reflected in Republican candidates for the lower-tier statewide offices.

Republican insiders are proud of getting Brian Sandoval to retire from the federal bench and run for governor — he’s a much stronger candidate against Democratic nominee Rory Reid than Gibbons would have been.

But the down-ticket races have less impressive candidates.

Some of it could reflect that the incumbents don’t seem particularly vulnerable. Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto and Secretary of State Ross Miller, both Democrats, are seen as strong up-and-comers.

They are also seen as future candidates for higher federal or statewide office, something that Republicans have been lacking, and a party leader would have been trying to fix.

Barrick, 55, said he’s not bothered that political observers don’t give him a shot. They thought he would be defeated by the other Republican in the field, Jacob Hafter.

“They don’t count money in the ballot box, they count votes,” he said. “I’m confident in the ability of Nevadans to make a choice between two different options. Nevadans are not interested in a socialist government,” which he said Cortez Masto supports.

Barrick, who was born in Henderson, went to law school after years of working as a carpenter and electrician.

As for Lauer, he wants to focus on Miller’s tenure in office. This includes Miller’s support for increasing filing fees, increased overtime in the office and long delays in businesses getting registered here.

Lauer, 40, who runs a real estate management business and is a military police officer in the U.S. Army Reserves, will first have to resolve this police dispute.

On June 4, at a Republican event at a bar, longtime GOP activist Jennifer Von Tobel said Lauer “kind of inserted himself into my conversation.” She said he suddenly grabbed her wrist “and twisted my arm, more than three times.”

She said he sprained both her wrists and possibly tore her rotator cuff. The Von Tobels were one of the founding families of Las Vegas. She said she has been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis for 10 years.

Lauer said “she’s the one making a big drama out of nothing.”

He said he was showing her “how a weaker individual can remove the hand of someone stronger. It was basically a dance twirl.”

He claimed she was drunk (she said she wasn’t) and had hit on him (she said she hadn’t).

He also said her story doesn’t make sense. She had offered to help him raise money. “What politician out there would attack someone offering to raise money for them?” Lauer said. Further, he said, “if I had assaulted her, there would be far more damage to her, as a combat soldier with five years of training in the Army.”

Lauer also said that regardless of the police investigation, he didn’t think there would be a felony charge, which would prevent him from running for office. ”She never said no. She never resisted. By that definition, it was never an assault. If there was an injury, it was merely an accident, not assault.”

A Metro Police spokesman said the investigation is ongoing.

GOP Chairman Mark Amodei said he couldn’t comment about the Lauer case.

But he said speculating about the strength of candidates “is crystal-ball stuff.”

“Pedigrees are one of the most ephemeral things. Dario Herrera had one of the strongest pedigrees at one point in time. Erin Kenny,” Amodei said in reference to former county commissioners convicted of corruption charges in the “G-sting” scandal. “John Ensign was once phenomenally strong.”

He noted that on Election Night 2008, people predicted Republicans would be dead “for a decade. It was a pretty lonely time to be an elephant in the jungle,” he said. Then he noted that Republicans were leading in the state’s top races, for U.S. Senate and governor.

EDITOR'S NOTE: In the fall of 2011, the charges against Lauer were dismissed by a Las Vegas justice of the peace.