8 minute read
News
from Feb. 5, 2015
That old New Nevada
Gov. Brian Sandoval’s message to the legislature: “We all want to tell our grandchildren that we were the architects of the New Nevada—that we were here when Nevada needed us most.”
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Assembly Democratic floor leader Marilyn Kirkpatrick: “The people that don’t think voting affects their life, and the people that live every single day with economic anxiety, those are the people who can’t be left behind in the New Nevada.”
Before anyone gets too attached to the name the governor is trying to attach to his program, they should know that someone was there before.
“New Nevada” is the name Gov. Robert List (1979-1983) gave to his program. “We face a New Nevada,” he said in his January 1979 inaugural address.
The shine from the term as it refers to Sandoval’s program could also be a bit tarnished by the fact that besides describing Sandoval’s program, it is the name of his political action committee—the New Nevada PAC, which spent more than a million dollars in last year’s campaign, more than half of it for attack ads on a single Democratic state senate candidate.
The New Nevada theme also seems to be at war with Sandoval’s earlier description of his plans, which suggested a return to a previous Nevada, offered in his first message to the legislature after taking office: “I say to you on this day, in the spirit of those who have sworn this oath before me, that when the clock strikes on that 150th anniversary [of statehood [in 2014], Nevada will be Nevada again.” Many observers were mystified by the meaning of the comment.
Abortion language draws accusation
The Weekly Standard, edited by William Kristol and Fred Barnes, asserted last week that U.S. Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada is facing his “worst nightmare” because of a fundraising letter sent out by a political action committee. The letter, over Reid’s signature, accused Republicans in Congress of “pushing a bill that would have BANNED abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.”
From this, Standard writer John McCormack concluded Reid is supporting late-term abortion. The claim swept through conservative and anti-abortion sites like Life News.
Reid has usually voted against the late-term procedure, and indeed against most abortion rights measures. In some cases, he voted for such measures because they carried unrelated provisions that he felt had to pass, but he opposes abortion and most of his voting record reflects it. In 1990, Nevadans voted in a landslide to retain a state law providing for legal abortion.
McCormack wrote that the mailing was sent out by Reid’s own PAC, which is not true. Senate Majority PAC was started in 2010 by three party consultants—Jim Jordan, Monica Dixon, Jeff Forbes—to try to combat the money unleashed, mostly against Democrats, by Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling. Originally called Commonsense Ten, the PAC’s name was changed in 2011.
Reid’s own political action committee is called Searchlight Leadership Fund.
Laxalt joins suit
In an apparent effort to preserve the Republican Party’s deficit among Latinos, Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt has joined a Texas lawsuit against President Obama’s November executive action on immigration.
Obama’s actions seek to shield millions of immigrants from deportation and permit them to work.
—Dennis Myers
At a Feb. 3 meeting of the Nevada Women’s Lobby, speaker Annette Magnus (standing) chatted with audience member Nancy Downey. Downey, a University of Nevada, Reno professor, was one of Magnus’s instructors years ago.
Payday
Activists form state movement to push for higher pay
The 2015 Nevada Legislature does not look like very fertile ground for those by hoping to help underpaid workers, Dennis Myers but there are those who are planning to try, anyway. It was a topic at a progressive “summit” in Henderson last week, Clark County Sen. Richard Segerblom plans to introduce legislation for a $15 minimum wage in the state, and the Nevada Women’s Lobby is particularly concerned about the impact of low wages on women.
Annette Magnus ProgressNow Nevada
At a lunch meeting this week of the Lobby’s Washoe chapter, speaker Annette Magnus of ProgressNow Nevada said, “Income inequality in Nevada is a huge problem. It’s something that we’re facing on many different levels, whether it’s with women, whether it’s workers who are making just at minimum wage or below minimum wage because they’re offered insurance. We’re seeing people who don’t have retirement. They don’t have pensions. They can’t retire. So this is affecting all different types of folks and all different generations of folks. And frankly, in Nevada and across the country, we can be doing better on this issue. It’s 2015. It’s time for us to do a little better.”
She said she’s not letting the new makeup of the Nevada Legislature bother her. Both houses of the legislature went Republican in the November election.
“I’m not discouraged,” she said. “I think it’s a huge opportunity for us to get new folks involved, to get new folks involved in the process, meeting them where they are, bringing people into this movement even if we have to go to break rooms at Taco Bells, whatever it needs to be, and really starting to educate folks about how this legislature is going to impact their everyday lives.”
More than a tenth of Nevada households—11.5 percent, to be exact—are headed by women with children. Given the fact that women are paid less than men, that makes those households particularly vulnerable.
“Here’s the thing—this should be a nonpartisan issue,” Magnus said when asked if this particular legislature is likely to be responsive to these concerns. “The Women’s Lobby is serious about getting people off government programs and if the legislature is serious about that, too, they need to pay people a living wage. … When we’re not, it disproportionately affects these more vulnerable groups, people who are just trying to get by. Not paying them a living wage, it’s not just hurting women, it’s hurting their families, too.”
Awareness
The Lobby’s Cecelia Colling, a former Sparks City Council member who scheduled Magnus as speaker, said she wanted to elevate the visibility of the low wage problem.
“I feel like there’s so many individuals now who are working very hard and still living in poverty,” she said. “So I think it’s an equity issue and an issue we
should all be thinking about.”
She said Nevada is a particular area of concern.
“I think that Nevada has a lot of people in the service industries who are underpaid, sometimes working two or three jobs, and it doesn’t seem fair.”
The prospects for Segerblom’s bill may be uncertain, given the fact that most members of the legislature believe business can do no wrong. But just getting such a bill introduced is encouraging to some, however dim its chances.
“It’s not going to stop us,” Magnus said. “We’re still going to try and get that minimum wage increase in Nevada, because we can be doing better. We should be doing better. We see others—you know, places and states, Seattle being one of them—that have just raised their wage to $15 an hour. So we know it’s going to be an uphill battle, but that’s not going to stop us from fighting and continuing this message that we have to make sure that people are making a living wage, a sustainable wage for their families.”
Nevada, like some other states, has a higher minimum wage than the federally mandated wage. Voters approved the Nevada wage at $1 above the federal level. But critics say pegging state wages to the federal level is a mistake because of how many years have passed over the decades without any raises in that federal level.
A number of people at the Lobby lunch spoke up, describing efforts by other organizations they are involved with on the same issues and their mobilizing social media for “ready response” as events unfold in the legislature.
Magnus said social media is taking a strategic role in this campaign and also drawing in those who have been little involved with politics but highly involved with social media—the young.
“We think this is getting young people involved,” she said. “People are going to be moving into these social media platforms— Instagram, Twitter—to get our message out there.” Ω
Cecilia Colling nevada Women’s Lobby
Tourists
An accident at Pyramid Way and C Street in downtown Sparks caused minor traffic problems and also brought rubberneckers from nearby bars and restaurants.
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