Almase defeats incumbent Assad in Las Vegas municipal judge race

By Conor Shine

Tuesday, June 7, 2011 | 10:33 p.m.

Las Vegas attorney and political newcomer Heidi Almase beat incumbent George Assad in the race for the Department 3 municipal judgeship. Almase won the election with 57 percent of the vote, besting Assad by nearly 7,000 votes.

Assad’s tenure on the bench – he was appointed by the City Council in 2002 and won re-election in 2005 – may have worked against him in the eyes of voters. Dan Gardner said he made his decision to vote for Almase after reading and hearing about Assad’s conduct in the courtroom. “He’s made some bad decisions… and overstepped his bound,” Gardner said.

In a 2010 survey of Clark County attorneys, Assad received the lowest marks of any judge in the city of Las Vegas, and he was formally reprimanded by the Nevada Judicial Discipline Commission in 2007 after ordering that a woman be detained, even though she had no case before the court.

Almase built her campaign around emphasizing her diverse legal background and criticizing Assad’s performance.

Assad’s campaign took another hit when his son, Anthony Carleo, was arrested and then charged for the December robbery of about $1.4 million in casino chips from the Bellagio.

For some voters, Assad’s son didn’t influence their vote, but for others the incident was enough to push them into Almase’s camp. “If he can’t raise his son right, how can we expect him to tell other people what to do?” asked Ben Garcia, who said he voted for Almase.

Almase, who runs a private criminal defense and family law practice, has previously worked as a prosecutor for the state attorney general and the Las Vegas City Attorney’s office.

A Las Vegas resident of 30 years, she spent several years in state law enforcement before graduating from the University of Nevada Las Vegas’s law school in 2001.