Nor'Town: Politics in North Las Vegas, Nevada

Chaney's Got Money for Mailers

Well, lookee what showed up in my mail box! And I was getting sorta weepy for Willia Chaney for not having any money, like that RJ story said the other day.

But, nope, it turns out she's got money for a mailer, the main weapon of choice in the local Nevada political battles. You can look over here for the front and the back.

Most disturbing about the mailer is the list of endorsements reproduced below.

Seeing all those familiar names, not one of whom is a bit concerned about allegations that Chaney owes the state a boatload of money, leads me to a rather subversive suggestion this voting season.

Vote against the incumbent. In every race, Republican, Democrat or other. Vote against them all.

The word "incestuous" is too nice a word for politics as usual in Nor'Town. There are really only two parties here: In and Out. If you are In, you get hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions handed to you by casinos, developers, the garbage guys and lawyer-lobbyists that feed of 'em. If you're Out, you lose.

All the while issues important to North Las Vegas get lost in the shuffle. Apartments, unfettered growth of casinoes, the Sheep Mountain Parkway, the Shooting range, none of these even get discussed.

For example, anybody know where Kelvin Atkinson, the chair of the Assembly committee on transportation. for pity's sake, stands on the Sheep Mountain Parkway? Well, he doesn't have to say cuz he's a well-financed incumbent. He only had $93,000 in his campaign kitty on August, but he's got one of those invisible opponents  this time.

And the district 17 challenger is a Paultard Republican wingnut, David Isbell. But, so what? What better way to say to Kelvin: hey, it's time to focus on North Las Vegas again, not kissing the Fertitta bros' rich butts.

Tell the Nor'Town apparatchik that you're mad as hell and you're not going to take it anymore.

And hey, no incumbents at the top of the ticket, unless you count McCain as just a Bush clone. So, vote for whoever you want up there--as long as it's Obama.

And throw a tiny scare into Berkley by voting for Wegner. Heck, you'll scare everybody else, too. What fun!

And all those Democrats supporting Chaney must be skeered that she'll beat 'em up at the next Nor'Town Township Pseudo-Democratic Jackboot Society, or whatever it's called these days, if they don't support her, I'm guessing.

Signing Up for Election Day

The official period for signing up to run for political offices for the November election has begun, and you can keep track of who's signed in over at the Clark County election site.

Course, Nor'Towners are waiting for the real fun of the city council and mayor race in 2009 when we have that silly off-year election that dooms the election to apathy and oblivion.

For now, we will just have to get by with the other races.

So far, several sacrificial lambs have signed up to get their butts whupped by Shelley Berkley this fall for Nor'Town congressional district 1:

• Chris Dyer (R) He's apparently a national delegate to the Repukelican convention and a dedicated Ron Paul supporter. (RtF)
• Edward "Mr. Clean" Hamilton (R)
• Ray J. Kornfeld (R)
• Mike Powers (R)

Well, at least that'll give you Republicans something to do at the primary. Mayor Mike oughtta jump in, too, just to make it interestin'--and to waste his money.

Tom Collins (D) will be running again for his seat on the Clark County Commission in District B. On Wednesday, May 14th, you can have pie with him. Mmm...Pie. I am resisting the temptation to call it "Pardee pie". Drat. I am so weak.

Marilyn Kirkpatrick (D) has signed up to defend her seat for for Assembly District 1.

Morse Arberry (D) will be running again in Assembly District 7.

Ruben Kihuen (D) will be running again in Assembly District 11.

Kelvin Atkinson (D) will be defending his seat in Assembly District 17. Atkinson has a challenger, one David Isbell (R). I guess Alberto* Angelo Carvalho's still in Iraq?

Mo Denis (D) has a challenger for his seat in district 28, one  Augustin "Tino" Mendoza, who's lost a couple of races for the state senate. (RJ,RJ) My favorite picture of Mr. Denis shows him trying to give Governor Jim Gibbons a little religion, which doesn't seem to have taken.    

Confused and lost? Check out the district maps over at the Nevada Legislature site.

* My apologizes for the dumb mistake. If it counts for anything, I have gotten it right in the past.

John Lee Pushes Toll Roads, Atkinson Waffles

Nor'Town Nevada State Senator John Lee came out for toll roads at a meeting of the Governor's Task Force on transportation Thursday. Fees could be over $10.00 a day or over a $100 a week.

Assemblyman and fellow Nor'Towner Kelvin Atkinson seemed a bit nervous about the measure:

Assemblyman Kelvin Atkinson, D-Las Vegas [sic], abstained on the final vote out of concern he would be branded as supporting toll roads. He questioned why the group needed to vote on the issue at all. (NA)

Atkinson is also chair of the Assembly Committee on Transportation last session, so he'll probably have to take a stand on the issue eventually. Probably.

The Sun also had a story today about how bill allowing the police to enforce the mandatory seat belt law died in the Assembly Transportation Committee.

The bill was sent to the Assembly Transportation Committee, chaired by Kelvin Atkinson, D-Las Vegas [sic].   

On the day of the hearing, Thomas-Boyers [a proponent of the bill] sent Atkinson 21 balloons. Here are 21 reasons to vote for the law, one for each year of my son's life, she wrote in a note to him.

It made Atkinson uncomfortable. Public policy should be set based on facts, he said.   

"It had become too emotional," Atkinson said in a recent interview.   

A dozen legislators told Atkinson they opposed the proposed law. He wouldn't name them.   

"I'm not going to throw people under the bus," he said.   

Atkinson said he sympathized with Thomas-Boyers. Still, the information on seat belt safety that he requested didn't arrive until the day of the hearing.

The bill never got to an assembly floor vote. (Sun)

Won't throw people under the bus, eh? But if they fly out the window without a seat belt...?

Obama Coming to Nor'Town with Kirkpatrick, Atkinson Endorsements

Barack Obama will have a town hall Friday in Nor'Town.

When: 3pm, Friday August 10

Where: Rancho High School, located at 1900 E. Owens Ave., west of Eastern Avenue.

The Barack campaign gives the wrong address, if you follow the link. Rancho is, just barely, in Nor'Town, not Las Vegas.

In a news release, the Obama campaign reports that North Las Vegas state assembly folk Kelvin Atkinson and Marilyn Kirkpatrick have endorsed Obama and will be working on Obama's Nevada steering committee. Also on the committee is Harvey Mumford, whose assembly district covers a bit of Nor'Town, and Helen Foley, who once served in both the Nevada Assembly and Senate.

Nor'Towner Legislators: the Aftermath

So, the Nevada legislature finally came to an end early this month with only a short special session to clean up a few details. Let's see how Nor'Towner legislators faired in the post-legislature media morass:

Jane Ann Morrison was not pleased with Kelvin Atkinson for tabling seat-belt legislation which would have allowed cops to pull over un-belted drivers:

Atkinson, D-North Las Vegas, said Friday he decided not to bring the bill up for a vote because "quite a few members of the committee were uncomfortable with the pressure they were receiving. The committee members didn't want to vote on it."

Weenies.

Atkinson, as chair of the Assembly Transportation Committee, was also in the middle of the road-funding mess wherein the idiot Governor forced the state to fund only 1/5th of needed projects.

State Senator Steven Horsford was considered a "winner" by the Sun:

He's a Democrat liked and respected by colleagues in both parties, with ties to labor and business. As a champion of empowerment schools, he's at the forefront of the governor's key education initiative. He's talked about as a potential leader of Senate Democrats, and even as the first black governor of Nevada.

Whoa--first black governor? Sounds like mayor of Nor'Town won't be good enough for Horsford. He'll need a Democratic majority in the State Senate to be the leader of the Senate, but is sounds like his future is tied to that body.

By the way, Horsford's bill that will require what is now called the Southern Nevada Enterprise Community Advisory board will become law in October. Language which would have automatically placed Horsford on the board was struck by amendment.

Marilyn Kirkpatrick is getting praise for her mopping up of the green-building idiocy:

[Nevada Speaker Barbara Buckley] also empowered women to succeed in an inherently sexist process, especially Assemblywomen Marilyn Kirkpatrick and Debbie Smith, who in many ways were the unsung session heroes because of their tireless work on fixing the green-building tax break fiasco. (Sun)

Nor'Towner Legislators in the News

You can still catch the rather one-sided debate between Senators Steven Horsford (D-near Nor'Town) and Bob Beers (R-near Nor'Town) over on the May 24th edition of Face to Face if you hurry. The "debate" just goes to show that truth is very minimally connected to rhetoric.

If you're still following the fate of Horsford's SB 352, the Senate refused two amendments added by the Assembly, and both houses have created a conference committee to try and iron things out. One of the issues is whether grocery stores which set up shop in certain places get a tax break. The other is whether the state senator from the area, that is, Horsford, gets to sit on the committee that the bill creates, or just some member at large from the Legislature. At least, that's how I read the amendments.

Assemblygal Marilyn Kirkpatrick (D-Nor'Town) was all over the Sun as part of the "dynamic duo" which was trying to fix that "green-building" tax bill. Debbie Smith of Sparks was the other half of the "duo". The green-building mess came about because the Legislature discovered that tax breaks to businesses for building environmentally friendly buildings were too generous--at least during times of huge growth with a Governor unwilling to raise taxes to fund any. Growth, I mean.

Kirkpatrick got a bit weepy about the roads in Nor'town, too, but they make us all cry, don't they?

Thank the nice Governor and Legislature for coughing up only 1/5 of what's necessary to fix the mess.

And Ruben Kihuen (D-Nor'Town) was last seen sucking up to the Gube.

Ooops. Can't forget Kelvin Atkinson, who's picture is showing up all over the state. (AP,AP) Atkinson brokered that 1/5th deal which passed the Assembly. That is, it came up with about 1/5th of the money considered necessary to fix the roads. A bunch of Clark County state senators are currently in revolt against the Atkinson bill:

Sen. Bob Coffin, D-Las Vegas, vowed to try today to amend Assembly Bill 595, which passed the Assembly 40-2 earlier Friday, to tack on an increase of 6 cents per gallon in the diesel fuel tax and force the trucking industry to help alleviate the mammoth shortfall.

Sen. Mike Schneider, D-Las Vegas, agreed that the Legislature must raise more revenue for highway construction.

"I am prepared to stay here all month long," Coffin said of the legislative session that is scheduled to end Monday.

"Some of us aren't," replied Assembly Transportation Chairman Kelvin Atkinson, D-North Las Vegas, who helped craft the bill that would allow the state to float a $1 billion bond and begin work on highway projects. (RJ)

Back to work, Kelvin.

[UPDATE: This just in: the Senate Taxation Committee passed the road funding bill over Coffin's objections. (AP)]

Northtown For Sale: AD 17

Jon Ralston reported recently that the CEO of overstock.com, one Patrick Byrne, was trying to buy some Republican politicians for North Las Vegas, home of the 'Monger, and elsewhere throughout the state.

Byrne suddenly is a major supporter of North Las Vegas and its mayor, Mike Montandon, who not so coincidentally has decided to start pouring his PAC money into legislative races.

This is the handiwork of GOP consultant Steve Wark, who not so coincidentally consults for Overstock.com in Utah and not so coincidentally is Montandon's political guru. Add this up and you suddenly have what Wark sees as swing districts inundated with cash from Montandon's city PAC and at least two other PACs that Byrne, thanks to Wark, has made flush during the last few months.

Byrne has given an aggregate of $110,000 to Montandon's PAC, a committee run by Wark's mother-in-law, ex-state GOP boss Earlene Forsythe and a conservative group, Keystone. Welcome to Nevada, Mr. Byrne. And you thought Howard Rich of Americans for Limited Government and the Club for Growth folks were the major out-of-state types trying to influence Nevada politics.

Besides the mayor and two other Repubic Assembly wannabes mentioned in Ralston's article, the Assembly District 17 race has Byrne money flowing into it. There, Republican Angelo Carvalho is running for a second time against Democrat incumbent Kelvin Atkinson. In 2004, Carvalho ran with just over $19,000 in contributions. Now, in 2006, he's got over $90,000.

Part of the difference comes from, you guessed it, the Byrne-Montandon slush fund. You can have a look at Carvalho's reports over at the irritating Clark County elections website. There you'll find the following list of interesting contributions to Carvalho:

$10,000 NLV PAC

$10,000 Montandon For Mayor

$10,000 Keystone Corp.

$ 5,000 Republican Assembly Caucus

According the financial records over at the crappy website for the Nevada Secretary of State's office, Byrne gave $50,000 to NLV PAC, $30,000 to Keystone and $40,000 to the Republican Assembly Caucus. Other large contributions to Carvalho come from the usual suspects, $10,000 from the Boyd family trust, and thousands from other casinos and Northtown developers. Yup, out lords and masters.

Kelvin Atikinson, the incumbent, is trailing Carvalho, as of last month, by about $20,000. His campaign coffer is depressingly filled by casino magnates as well.

However, the mind boggles at the amounts of money being thrown at these elections. And, guys, you can use some of that money to spiff up the websites. Although websites at the Assembly level probably don't matter as much as walking the neighborhood. And money from Utah wackos.