Well, I don’t relish raining on conservatives’ celebratory parade after Tuesday’s primary victories here in Nevada, but a commitment to fair analysis requires that I do just that.
Though from one point of view conservatives “won” with the ousting of three tax-raising Republican assembly reps, that result has given Democrats hope that they can gain between one and three seats in the Nevada Assembly in November. If that happens, their 27-15 margin will grow, they’ll have a majority, and they’ll end up with the more than 28 seats needed for a supermajority, i.e. the number needed to override a veto by Republican governor Jim Gibbons.
Which in light of the tax-hiking tendencies of Assembly Democrats would be very bad news for Nevadans.
Republican strategists I’ve spoken to seem to think the GOP can hold onto those seats, and I hope they’re right. The man who defeated Marvel, Don Gustavson (District 32), is pretty well known so there’s a fair degree of confidence he can hold down his corner of the fort. People don’t seem quite as sure that Francis Allen’s nemesis, Richard McCarthur (District 4), and the guy who beat Bob “Lite” Beers, Jon Ozark (District 21), can do the same in a year that is shaping up to be very competitive.
With 10 of 21 state Senate seats and all 42 Assembly seats up for grabs here in the Battle Born State, it’s going to be an interesting election night in more ways than one.
Tags: Allen, analysis, assembly, Beers, Blogs of Nevada, conservatives, Gibbons, GOP, Gustavson, majority, Marvel, McCarthur, Ozark, primaries, primary, Republican, results, seats, Senates, strategists, supermajority, tax, tax hikes, Taxation, taxed, Taxes, taxing
A reader emailed and asked why I didn’t say anything about today being Primary Day in Nevada. The short answer is I didn’t think readers outside NV would care and residents here already knew about it. Anyhoo, I just got home a little while ago and am checking the preliminary results online.
Here are a few Fun Clark County Facts while you wait for me to do that. Clark County is NV’s largest county by population (because it contains Las Vegas). County was created in 1908. Total county population was 1.9 million in 2006. We have approximately 327,000 registered Dems, 235,000 registered GOPers, and 136,000 “miscellaneous” (Independents etc.) for a total of about 697,000 registered voters.
OK, enough of that. With 82% of the precincts and all the mail-outs in, we had about 102,000 people vote. See all the results here. No big surprises in the Congressional races. I’m too tired to go through the rest of them one by one, but I will say this:
Glad to see Chad Christensen won in his Assembly race. Glad to see Francis “the Knife” Allen did poorly in hers. Didn’t much care whether Assemblyman Bob Beers won or lost, but know people who are glad.
And am appalled and disgusted that Family Court Judge Del Vecchio got 20,000+ votes. I’ve been sitting on some details I’m privy to re: Del Vecchio thinking it was all best revealed in October, but if That many people are not yet aware of the many, MANY reasons this guy should not only Not be on the bench but should be in prison…I’ll re-think the delay.
Tags: Allen, assembly, august 12, Beers, Blogs of Nevada, Christensen, congressional, Del Vecchio, lost, primaries, primary, results, won
