Photo/Dennis Myers
On Aug. 28, U.S. Sen. Harry Reid was briefed by press aide Kristin Orthman at his Reno office.
Hotbed of concern Election turnout in Nevada dropped sharply compared with the last midterm election. In 2010, 723,515 Nevadans voted. This year, that figure fell by a whopping 171,135 to 552,380. This year’s primary turnout also fell dramatically, from 320,648 in 2010 to 222,240 this year, a drop-off of 98,408. Gov. Brian Sandoval’s effort to avoid being seen as a Latino candidate seems to be working well, according to a survey by Latino Decisions. Even running virtually unopposed, Latinos voted against him 52 to 47 percent. Democrat Bob Goodman, a virtual unknown with little money who barely campaigned, outpaced the governor in that demographic. Latino Decisions is a survey firm that polled elections in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Nevada, Texas and North Carolina.
Scofflaw skates? The Southern Poverty Law Center is asking why no arrests have been made six months after the Cliven Bundy faceoff. “Government officials promised accountability for those who broke the law by taking up arms against federal agents,” the SPLC said in a prepared statement. “It seems unfathomable, in fact, that the U.S. Department of Justice would allow a mob of antigovernment zealots to get away with using the threat of violence to block the enforcement of the law. But, as the months have dragged on, there has been no response. Not an arrest. Not an indictment. Nothing.” In April, the Bureau of Land Management began gathering Bundy’s cattle in payment of his unpaid bills. Bundy, an organic rancher, summoned followers to the scene with his blog (“Range war begins tomorrow at Bundy ranch at 9:30 a.m.”) and they arrived from around the nation, many of them armed. Some were photographed on an overpass aiming weapons at crowds that included people from both sides. The BLM finally called it quits and withdrew to avoid bloodshed. The Clark County Sheriff’s Office and the FBI have both been conducting investigations but nothing has been announced, so far. This raises concern because it was federal inertia that created the problem in the first place. The BLM allowed Bundy’s unpaid fees to pile up for two decades, a delay that has never been explained. The SPLC monitors activities of hate groups around the United States. In a July report, it said that extremists emboldened by the Bundy incident had been involved in a number of dangerous incidents, including a gunman allegedly pointing a handgun at a Utah BLM worker while holding a sign reading, “You need to die,” a BLM ranger and a California Highway Patrol officer shot and wounded near Nevada City, and two police officers and a bystander killed in Las Vegas by Bundy supporters. Since the standoff, Bundy has been speaking to right wing groups and left the Republican Party to join Nevada’s Independent American Party, formed in 1968 as a vehicle for George Wallace’s presidential candidacy.
Mining keeps cushy berth Businesspeople in the state were so intent on defeating Question 3, which would have provided for a business tax, that they overlooked Question 2, which would have relieved pressure for new business taxes. Question 2 would have removed a cap on mining taxes in the Nevada Constitution, a privilege enjoyed by no other industry. Most mining corporations operating in Nevada are not only outof-state but out-of-country companies. The financial disclosure filed by Nevadans for Mining Fairness shows only one business contribution—$20,000 from Wynn Hotel Casino in Las Vegas—to help with the campaign to repeal the loophole, which failed by just 0.06 percent of the vote.
—Dennis Myers 8 | RN&R |
NOVEMBER 13, 2014
Was it Reid’s fault? Critics and commentators unload on Nevada senator The diminished standing of U.S. Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada was on display on the state’s newsstands last week, with by photographs of President Obama Dennis Myers alongside Sen. Mitch McConnell instead of Reid dominating the postelection edition of USA Today. Even its occasional placement alongside a Reno Gazette-Journal home state assessment (“Reid still a force”) couldn’t take the edge off Reid’s reduced stature. Many Harry Reid critics seemed to feel terrible for the badly beaten Democratic Party and offered advice to help it come back.
“Clearly, he’s going to have some power.” John Boehner U.s. house speaker On a Fox network program, former George W. Bush press aide Dana Perino said, “My point on Harry Reid is well known. ... He’s an absolutely poisonous person in the United States Senate and politics and the entire country ... and Democrats would be much better off if he were to move on. But I think he’s extremely powerful and has a big reelection coming up in Nevada, and that’s going to be a tough race for him, and they are not going to want to diminish him in any way. If they take away his leadership position, he probably will lose.”
“He’s raised millions of dollars for his colleagues, served as the public face of GOP disgust and tried, though failed, to protect some of his colleagues by blocking legislation from votes in the past year,” wrote Ed O’Keefe in the Washington Post. “But the loss of as many as nine seats has only intensified the anger and frustration that’s been brewing among a small band of Senate Democrats, who suggested Wednesday that they might withhold support for their leader.” Other conservative commentators who emoted for the poor Democrats claimed Reid had blocked so many votes that his members were unable to show their Republican sides. Coal lobbyist Scott Segal (Reid is a coal critic) at the D.C. law firm of Bracewell & Guiliani told the San Francisco Chronicle that Obama had a defacto veto in the Senate in the form of Reid, who could block politically risky legislation from advancing in the chamber, thus keeping it away from Obama’s desk. “What this really did is deprive business-oriented Democrats of the ability even to be relevant, thus devaluing, for example, the chairmanships of Mary Landrieu and Mark Begich,” Segal said. “Political advertisements literally from coast to coast were able to characterize these moderate Democrats as having 100 percent agreement with President Obama.” Washington Post conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin: “Not only
did [Reid’s] party lose the majority and sustain massive losses, but his strategy of preventing votes was the downfall of many Democrats. The reason Republicans could claim truthfully that their opponents had sided with the president 97 (or whatever) percent of the time was that Reid didn’t take many votes, and he shut down the amendment process. That left red state Democrats precious few times to demonstrate their independence ...” But such figures seemed to be defending Democratic senators from floor strategies those senators themselves wanted. Senate Democratic whip Richard Durbin of Illinois told the Los Angeles Times, “Privately, I’ve had people call me—beg me—not to vote,” Durbin said. “He’s [Reid’s] done what he thought was in the best interest of the caucus.” Besides, with Republicans stealing the Democrats’ one-time economic populism—by criticizing poverty, the drug war and its impact on minorities, unfair taxation, corporate unaccountability, wage stagnation—it appeared that the last thing the Democrats needed was more chances to show their conservative side. Nevada columnist and editor of NevadaLabor. com Andrew Barbano, a former professional campaign consultant, said the ongoing recession D.C. doesn’t recognize was an omnipresent factor. “To the contrary, Reid blocked votes on a lot of Republican-laid land mines, where a recorded vote would have had no use other than as campaign commercial prop,” Barbano said. “Andrea Mitchell of NBC News got it right: The Democrats failed to seize the economic issue. For millions, Great Depression II has never ended. So the guy with three jobs either had not time to vote or has given up on the political process as offering any surcease from sorrow. Businessoriented Democrat, definition: Somebody who wants to cut corporate taxes.” What Andrea Mitchell said was, “I’m not echoing [Republican National chair] Reince Priebus, because he is obviously partisan, and that’s his job, but if you look at the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Financial Times, all the reporting on the jobs data from Friday reported that participation rate is at historic lows, decade lows. Fifty-nine percent are ... in the labor force. That’s just not a sustainable recovery. We have two Americas. We really do.” One of the odder attacks on Reid came in Los Angeles where Wilshire
