By: Chuck Muth
Nevada News and Views

TODAY’S NN&V HEADLINES

  • Supreme Court Hands Free Speech Huge Victory (Sean Whaley/Nevada News Bureau) – Like it or not, the 2010 campaign season is likely to dominate the airwaves more than ever nationally and in Nevada following a decision today by the U.S. Supreme Court repealing a limitation on political spending by corporations.
  • Saving Senator Ensign (Chuck Muth) – I hate to admit it, but the folks over at the Democrat Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) raise a legitimate point about Republican U.S. Senate candidates Sue Lowden and Danny Tarkanian when it comes to defending scandal-ridden Sen. John Ensign. They put this out yesterday:
  • Some Questions for Brian Krolicki (Bill Parson) – On Thursday morning, our Nevada Lieutenant Governor Brian K. Krolicki almost announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate on Alan Stock’s radio program, but he continues to drag it out as he and his family make a final decision.
  • Dina Titus Cares…About Dina Titus (Dr. Joe Heck) – On Wednesday, as the political winds of change were becoming clear that Americans were fed up with tax and spend, big government ideas like the Titus//Pelosi healthcare debacle, Dina Titus quickly shifted her position on healthcare to protect her own self-interest.
  • Berkley Runs For The Hills (Craig Lake) – In the wake of the election of Senator-elect Scott Brown in Massachusetts, Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.) has shifted course on healthcare in order to protect her job in an article dated Wednesday in the Las Vegas Review Journal.
  • Citizens United v. FEC – Opportunities for Participation Grow (Benjamin L. Ginsberg) – American campaigns and elections will change dramatically as a result of Thursday’s Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC. The opinion provides new opportunities for many players in the process, but includes some large pitfalls for candidates and the political parties.
  • The Lessons of Massachusetts (Newt Gingrich) – Scott Brown had the courage to serve for years in a small minority in the Massachusetts legislature. He had the courage to serve for 20 years and become a lieutenant colonel in the Massachusetts Army Reserve. He had the courage to run for the Senate seat which no Republican has won since Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. in 1946.
  • No Surprises Tuesday Night (Michael Zahara) – Every traditional Democrat I know saw it coming; every progressive extremist I know, thought it was impossible. We lost a seat we held for 57 years—Teddy Kennedy’s no less!—and there are still some Dems in DC who insist on pushing forward.

Click here to read these stories at the Nevada News & Views site!

SURVEY SAYS!

Do you think Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki should enter the GOP primary for the U.S. Senate race in Nevada this year?

  • Yes
  • No
  • Not sure

To cast your vote in today’s online survey, click here!

MUTHS TRUTHS

  • The Supreme Court slapped a defibrillator on free speech yesterday, allowing corporations which are constantly under attack by politicians and government to participate in our electoral system. Let’s hope the Court someday soon takes this ruling to the logical next step and removes all caps on political contributions as well.
  • According to figures released this morning, Nevada’s unemployment rate shot up to 13 percent in December. Yeah, that Harry Reid “stimulus” program sure is working like a charm, ain’t it?
  • The Las Vegas Review-Journal also reports that Nevada’s private sector employers had to cut another 12,500 jobs in December due to the recession, and have shed over 75,000 jobs from 2008 through 2009. I wonder how many government workers have lost their jobs in that same period? If only there was a news bureau somewhere in the state which could research and provide those figures.
  • Massachusetts Republican National Committeeman Ron Kaufman explains how Scott Brown won Tuesday’s U.S. Senate race there to Washington Post columnist David Broder: “We had a really good candidate. A military veteran, a family guy, a fiscal conservative, moderate on social issues, a pro-choice Catholic.”
  • Hmm. Here in Nevada we have a candidate who wasn’t in the military but was part of Bob Hope’s USO tours in Vietnam in the 1970s, is a family woman, a fiscal conservative, moderate on social issues and a Catholic. Alas, she’s not pro-choice, but pro-life. Drats! Back to the drawing board.
  • Last fall, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Danny Tarkanian said he would welcome having Sen. John Ensign campaign with him. On Thursday, however, Tarkanian said “I do not expect to be campaigning with Senator Ensign this fall.” Flip-flop? Or is Tark signaling doubt about whether or not he’ll be the GOP nominee after the June primary?
  • What if Republican Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki jumps into the U.S. Senate race; who would step up to run for lieutenant governor on the GOP side? Likely soon-to-be term-limited state Sen. Randolph Townsend and/or M Resort president Anthony Marnell III, who was already looking at the race last fall when Krolicki’s fate at the hands of Attorney General Catherine Cortez-Ahab-Masto was still unknown.
  • Republican Nevada state Sen. Mark Amodei, now running for the U.S. Senate, turned in an impressive performance on Face-to-Face yesterday, leaving me to wonder where THAT Mark Amodei has been the last 15 years or so. If THAT Mark Amodei had been a regular face of the Republican Party with the media before, during and after all the legislative sessions in which he’s served, maybe the GOP wouldn’t have been so screwed up today. Such unrealized leadership potential.
  • Gov. Jim Gibbons and the Nevada Legislature continue to make preparations for a special session to repeal a law pushed by the teachers union in 2003 which protects teachers from being evaluated on a silly thing like whether or not their students are, you know, learning and stuff. That prohibition disqualifies Nevada from competing for federal Race to the Top funds.
  • Meanwhile, Political Diary reports that Texas Republican “Gov. Rick Perry has announced that Texas will be the first state to drop out of the federal ‘Race to the Top’ education program,” saying the strings attached would only exacerbate the state’s budget woes in the long run and force Texas to “commit to adopt national curriculum standards and tests and to incur ongoing costs.”
  • Perry says other conservative Republican governors such as Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Haley Barbour of Mississippi might also drop out of the program. Wonder if Nevada’s Gov. Jim Gibbons will soon join them?
  • Speaking of Gov. Gibbons, his office issued a press release yesterday blaming Democrats for the tax hikes passed in last year’s legislative session which certainly haven’t helped efforts to pull Nevada out of the recession. But as the ever insightful Jon Ralston pointed out in Flash yesterday, those tax hikes were only passed because Republicans in the state Senate voted with the Democrat (or is it Democratic?) majority, giving them the 2/3 super-majority needed to pass the tax hikes AND override the governor’s veto.
  • Ah, what a different political landscape it would be right now if only those Republicans had stuck together and stuck to their fiscally conservative guns instead of sticking us with those tax hikes. Voters in Nevada would then have as clear a choice at the polls in November that voters in Massachusetts had this week.
  • Who will be the first gubernatorial candidate or state legislator to propose eliminating the state’s anti-job employee head tax, or at least slap a 2-year moratorium on it, during the upcoming special session?
  • Nevada state Assembly Republicans appear to be as screwed up politically as they’ve ever been. Not only do they have no known list of credible candidates vying for those nine “open” seats currently held by term-limited Democrats (or is it Democratics?), but they raised just a fraction of what Assembly Democrats raised last year going into this year’s campaigns.
  • But actually, it’s even worse than that.
  • The Democrat Assembly caucus raised over a quarter million dollars while Assembly Republicans report raising just $68,500. And even that’s not the worst of it. The Democrats report having spent none of their booty yet, while the Republicans report spending, get this, $100,000. As Jon Ralston wryly notes, “And these deficit-spenders are the fiscal conservatives?” Yeah, no kidding. And some still wonder why Republicans are in the super-minority in the lowe house?

OTHER NEWS & VIEWS

  • The growing feud between GOP senate hopefuls Sue Lowden and Danny Tarkanian has been noticed by Washington, DC’s, daily conservative newspaper of record. Read all about it HERE
  • “Unionized Clark County employees packed Tuesday’s commission meeting to show solidarity against an advisory report that calls for cuts to their ever-growing wages,” notes the Las Vegas Review-Journal in an editorial today. “Then George Stevens, the county’s finance chief, told commissioners that next year’s budget will need to be slashed by as much as $200 million — $74 million more than had been previously predicted.” Read more HERE

TUBE TIPS

Tray Abney from the Reno Chamber of Commerce and Lee Rowand from ACLU go Face to Face with Jon Ralston tonight to discuss yesterday’s stunning Supreme Court ruling on campaign finance laws. The program airs at 4:00 pm Monday through Friday on KVBC Channel 3 in Las Vegas, as well as NBC affiliates in Reno and Elko. http://www.lasvegassun.com/videos/face-face/

FAMOUS LAST WORDS

  • “For years, it has been accepted that a Democrat in Nevada is different than a Democrat in Massachusetts. But we now know of at least one similarity: Both seem like endangered species.” – Columnist Jon Ralston
  • “I can think of no atmospherics here that help the Democrats – except one. The best thing the Democrats have going here is the Republican Party. The GOP has no money, quirky (charitable description alert) leadership and internecine warfare.” – Columnist Jon Ralston
  • “The more campaign finance laws we have had enacted, the fewer successes challengers and non-incumbents have had. Anything we can do to restore free speech is very important.” – Janine Hansen, executive director of the Independent American Party of Nevada, Nevada News Bureau, 1/21/10
  • “How would Floridians appreciate it if, say, Senator John Ensign tried to orchestrate a primary win for Charlie Crist? Every Nevadan should feel insulted over the fact that Washington insiders would try to tell us who should or shouldn’t be a candidate.” – Blogger Mark Anderson on reports that Sen. John McCain of ARIZONA is recruiting Nevada Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki for the U.S. Senate race here in NEVADA
  • “Nothing (Doug) Hampton has alleged (about the scandal surrounding John Ensign’s affair with Hampton’s wife) has yet been disproved.” – Columnist Jon Ralston