Facebook
Fark
Digg
Reddit
Stumble
AP Photo/Cathleen Allison
Nevada Senate Democrats Allison Copening and John Lee talk on the Senate floor late Monday night, June 6, 2011, at the Legislature in Carson City.
Wednesday, June 20, 2012 | 2 a.m.
Sun coverage
While some progressive activists want to parlay their victory over a conservative Democratic lawmaker last week into a broader effort to move the Democratic Party left, the coalition that defeated state Sen. John Lee may have been just a one-shot deal.
Some coalition members who helped oust Lee in last week’s primary said they were not interested in broader goals of making the Democratic Party more liberal or taking out specific moderate lawmakers, as another leader of the coalition said last week.
“It was kind of the perfect storm,” said Nevada Conservation League Political Director Kyle Davis.
He said the group’s involvement in the election was about a bill sponsored by Lee that would remove Nevada from the Lake Tahoe Compact with California.
“We decided that bad actions needed to have consequences,” he said. “So we decided to do it. It’s not our issue to re-center the Democratic Party or move the Democratic Party in a progressive direction. Our concern is environmental issues.”
Indeed, his group is nonpartisan. In a heated 2008 state Senate race, for example, the group sent mailers in support of Republican Joe Heck, who’s now a congressman.
Elisa Cafferata, president and CEO of Nevada Advocates for Planned Parenthood, said the group opposed Lee because of a survey he filled out in 2004, in which he staked out an anti-abortion position and support for restricting access to birth control.
She said Lee’s defeat is an indication voters care about women’s health issues.
“Access to birth control has become an election issue,” she said.
Cafferata pointed to a failed initiative in Nevada to restrict abortions and proposals in other states to require “medically unnecessary” procedures for women before abortions.
“We hope the message from voters is pretty clear: Legislators in Nevada should not go and copy this legislation,” she said.
In an interview with the Las Vegas Sun on Friday, Erin Neff, head of ProgressNow Nevada Action, a group with a broad progressive agenda, said Lee’s ouster is a warning to Democrats that the base can’t be disregarded.
The goal, Neff has maintained from the beginning, was to shift Democratic lawmakers in Carson City to the left.
Last week, Neff specifically singled out two Democratic assemblywomen, Assemblywoman Marilyn Kirkpatrick of North Las Vegas and Assemblywoman Debbie Smith of Sparks, as lawmakers she was watching. She made clear in the interview she was speaking on her own behalf and not for the coalition.
Indeed, Neff might be out on her own when it comes to targeting other Democrats, who have long been allies of organizations involved in defeating Lee.
The Nevada Conservation League, for example, named Smith one of its lawmakers of the year in 2011.
Neff did not respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.
Bob Fulkerson, executive director of the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, whose political arm was another member of the coalition, agreed with Neff that Lee’s defeat also had a broader message. He declined to name specific lawmakers who might be targeted.
But, he said: “The consequences of that victory, by such a huge margin, shows the power of progressives in Nevada. That makes people uncomfortable.”
The degree to which most Nevada journalists don't understand the workings of the Progressive movements in Nevada is astonishing. Progressive groups are always small to moderately sized with funding to match their size. In turn there seem to be more of them with each revolving around single issues. They can and do coalesce as a group under the proper circumstances. Pretty much anyone involved with them knows this.
David McGrath Schwartz obviously hasn't spent any time getting to know them.
On the other side of the political divide are just a couple of massively funded organizations primarily controlled by their wealthy leaders that don't need to collaborate and so they don't, unless of course someone threatens to make them actually pay their fair share in taxes, for which they will all gang up together and start to spread propaganda and disinformation.
[Their doing it right now to try and prevent tax based funding from reaching students in our schools.]
This is silly.
It is all a bunch of mumbo jumbo.
If this was the tea party kicking out a moderate Republican then the Sun would moan on-and-on about how horrible that extremists are taking over the party and that a fine respectable deal maker is now gone.
Now you get these silly articles where paragraphs are in direct conflict with each other while they tried to do this crazed tap dance to explain away the liberal extremism.
Thanks for the laughs......HYPOCRITES!!!!!!!!
Once again the term "progressive" is a euphemism for "hardcore, leftwing socialist".
oooohh, Erin Neff is watching, be afraid, be very afraid
As usual, rhetoric and hyperbol are being spread like a farmer putting out manure. @Hutch_Misfi, a broad based business tax would only go into the school district budget, then CCSD would take a huge chunk of it and put it into use, THRU THE SCHOOL DISTRICT...The legislature has nothing to do with the money after it is distributed to the school district...Now, if the district doesn't get it to the schools, cry to the district...It seems kind of funny how everyone is saying the progressives won big...case in point...District 1 has a total of almost 22,000 registered democrats yet only 3563 showed up to the polls in the primary...Do the math folks, either these people are bemoaning their pitiful choice of candidates or they just could stomach the thought of voting...
You are seeing a people beat down by a corrupt government in collusion with corrupt unions knowing the game is rigged. WE have Firemen paid by the state, computer tech working for the state - all of whom were state legislators at he time voting on their own interests instead of the Peoples interests. How exactly does on conclude that the game is NOT rigged.
Lies abound and obscure the fact the people have not been represented - but unions and big money dominate the process. We have Democrats that run for office as republicans and act as democrats. (TAX and SPEND) and the unions love the increase in dues. Then they can buy more politicians
Big money guarding their wealth against competition or theft by government. Human nature that buys government cooperation in restructuring the game and changing the rules at every level of government.
When a county official make more than the President of the United States, something is egregiously wrong. It needs to be corrected.
How is the game not rigged.
WE aim to change that: More to come.
It is quite possible that this coalition has done its job. However, PLAN and Progressive Democrats now know the game plan for contested-primary coordination. FINALLY!
Progressive people want to solve problems, resolve problems and in all cases move Nevada FORWARD! We have many very independent Democrats that are very progressive - but, we have tolerated the recycled excuses from the Old Guard within our ranks for too long - it was time to send a strong message to the D.I.N.O.'s (Democrats In Name Only) - "Either you fully support the Democratic Issues Platform, or you will pay the consequences and be voted out!