Gubernatorial Candidate Mike Montandon Opening Campaign Office In Carson City
Former North Las Vegas Mayor Mike Montandon, one of three Republicans in the gubernatorial primary, will open his Northern Nevada campaign headquarters on Saturday in Carson City. He follows Gov. Jim Gibbons in opening a Carson City office. Only Democrat Rory Reid has opened a Reno office so far.
The grand opening will be at 5 p.m. Saturday at 1931 California St.
Rory Reid Files To Run For Governor Of Nevada
The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports:
Democratic candidate for governor Rory Reid said he wants to help build a “fundamentally new economy” for Nevada, although he wouldn’t say how he would enact his vision for reform when faced with a budget shortfall that could exceed $3 billion in 2011.
Reid, chairman of the Clark County Commission and son of Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., filed his election papers Tuesday morning in Las Vegas.
During a question-and-answer session with reporters Reid called for annual sessions of the Legislature, hinted he could balance the budget without new taxes and said if he were in the shoes of Republican Gov. Jim Gibbons he would sign a budget bill that calls for a 6.9 percent cut to the state’s education spending.
“This is an exciting time because it provides an opportunity to do things we have never done before,” Reid said of Nevada’s budget problems and assertions from conservatives and liberals that state government needs major spending and revenue reform.
“Nevada has been doing the same old thing for decades. We’ve been reliant on tourism with some agriculgutre and mining thrown in,” he said. “This is a time when we can expand our economy, do new things and I want to be a part of that.”
Reid is the only Democrat so far in the race. On the Republican side, former federal judge Brian Sandoval leads all candidates in statewide polls, Gibbons has high unfavorable ratings and is considered a longshot to win another term and former North Las Vegas Mayor Mike Montandon is struggling to achieve high statewide name recognition.
Reid criticized Gibbons for proposing cuts to education, saying that quality education for residents is the foundation for changes he wants to see in the economy.
During a recent special session of the Legislature called to cover an $887 million shortfall, Gibbons proposed 10 percent cuts to kindergarten through 12th grade spending and more than 12 percent in cuts to higher education. Democratic leaders in the Legislature at first said they wanted to balance the budget without education cuts, then said they didn’t want cuts to exceed 5 percent and eventually agreed to a cut of 6.9 percent.
Reid characterized the budget session as “taking out our bubble gum and scotch tape and piecing it back together” but said if he were sitting at the governor’s desk today he would sign the compromise plan.
“A bipartisan group of legislators came together and did the best they could at the time. So, yes, I would sign the bill,” Reid said. “What I’m saying is my candidacy is about ensuring that we are not in that situation again, that we are not faced with that kind of choice and if we do what I’ve suggested we won’t be.”
When asked whether he agreed with statements from Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford, D-Las Vegas, that Nevada’s business community needed to contribute more money to support state services, Reid wouldn’t comment specifically.
“Sen. Horsford is doing what he thinks is best for the state and I am really not going to comment on his point of view. I’m more interested in mine,” Reid said.
Nevada Governor Gibbons To Veto Special Session Bill
In a somewhat surprising move out of Carson City, Governor Jim Gibbons’ office now says he plans to veto one of the bills passed in the recent special legislative session. The governor will reportedly veto Senate Bill 3, establishing a four-day, 10-hour-a-day work week for most state employees. The bill also requires employees who are exempt from one-day-per-month furloughs to instead take a 4.6% pay cut. According to Gibbons’ chief of staff, the governor will instead enact most parts of the bill through executive orders and new regulations.
Poll Analysis From Chuck Muth
In my ever-so-humble opinion, the only way Gov. Jim Gibbons has a prayer of winning the Republican nomination in the June 8 GOP gubernatorial primary is to demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt to Republican primary voters that he can win against Rory Reid in November.
That became a bit more difficult with yesterday’s Rasmussen polling results. According to those results, Republican Brian Sandoval would crush Reid the Younger, 53-35 percent. However, mini-Reid would roll over the incumbent 44-36 percent.
Many GOP primary voters who have a conservative soft spot for Gibbons simply are not going to take the chance of turning the state over to Son of Harry in November. And the sooner such GOP primary voters accept that reality, the sooner many of them may begin to take a serious look at the other conservative alternative in the race, Mike Montandon, who the poll shows would defeat Reid 42-37 percent.
However, on the critical issue of taxes, Montandon hasn’t shown any real difference from Sandoval. Both “say” they won’t raise taxes, but neither is secure enough in that position to actually put it in writing. And as we all know, we’ve heard “read my lips” promises from politicians before.
CANDID CANDIDATE: An e-Interview With Republican Gubernatorial Candidate Mike Montandon
(Nancy Dallas) – Mike Montandon, Republican candidate for Nevada governor, served three terms (12 years) as Mayor of North Las Vegas, (July 1997-July 2009). He is currently employed in the construction industry. Prior to arriving in Nevada 17 years ago, he was in commercial appraisal and land planning in Phoenix, Arizona.
Mike is a graduate of Arizona State University and has also completed the Harvard University Program for Senior Executives at the JFK School of Government. He is married to Antoinette and they have five children.
You served as a local city official. You have not had any State legislative experience. Why did you determine to run for Governor and not for a legislative seat?
I served in an executive capacity over one of the fastest growing large cities in America. During that time, I proved myself as a leader and a visionary who brought growth and opportunity to my constituents. I plan on achieving the same goals from Nevada’s chief executive office.
What would you consider your major accomplishments as Mayor?
I created a new process for land entitlement that eliminated the “contract” zoning that is referred to as “Resolutions of Intent.” I created the 5th Street corridor, including the Transit Supportive Land Use Plan. I helped establish the process and regulations for the SNPLMA law that allowed us to create Aliante. I used SNPLMA to acquire Craig Ranch, the largest green asset in NLV for a city park. Most importantly, I helped eliminate much of the stigma associated with NLV.
What personal attributes do you feel best qualify you for the position of Governor?
I am, first and foremost, a leader who is willing to make the hard decisions and to advocate for my constituents. I understand the role of government, and do what I can to make sure it works for the people it serves. I have the ability to listen to and communicate with my fellow Nevadans. Above all else, I have the capacity and desire to serve in public office to help Nevada achieve the greatness it deserves.
In serving others as their elected representative, I am honored with the responsibility of their trust. I have knowledge of our history and of how our government works, and a desire to continuously expand that knowledge. I have made the study of the U.S. Constitution and the understanding the proper role of government a daily practice. I would rather be considered a statesman than a politician. By holding public office, I have gained/grown/learned more as an individual than I have given as a public servant.
You appear to have a well-organized campaign team in place. What is your basic ‘game plan’ to reach out to the voters in the state? What do you estimate the Governor’s race will cost? Are you investing your own money in the campaign? To what degree?
My campaign team is well organized, and they are all dedicated to winning on Election Day.
Our “game plan,” so to speak, has many different aspects. Our primary objective is to work to identify and connect with the 60,000 voters I will need to win the primary election. In order to do this effectively, we estimate the cost will be somewhere in the range of $1.5 million. Once we have won the primary, we will need to spend an additional $4 million to win.Spending years in public service has not left me with a fortune of my own to spend. However, as I did in my three successful bids for the office of Mayor in North Las Vegas, I will devote all of my time and attention on winning this gubernatorial race for the benefit of all Nevadans.
You have two announced Republican opponents in the race for governor. Why should the voters of Nevada select you over them?
I am the candidate with the proven ability to bring jobs and growth. I have the executive experience necessary to lead and I understand the key elements needed for Nevada’s economic recovery. I am the candidate who has a strong voice to attract businesses and jobs back to our state; the candidate who understands that we need to fix our educational system; the candidate who knows that, as Nevadans, all of our rights must be protected, including the right to life.
With my experience, Nevadans will not have to gamble with their votes in 2010. They will know what they are getting: a Governor who will bring success back to Nevada.
Governor Gibbons Visits Winnemucca
From the Silver Pinyon Journal:
WINNEMUCCA — Governor Jim Gibbons stopped over Sunday morning to attend the Ranch Hand Rodeo and later visited with members of local government. The primary topic of conversation: the projected $3 billion budget gap the state is facing in advance of the 2011 Legislative Session.
The gap was partially created by temporary measures taken during the 2009 Legislative Session, which included tax increases scheduled to expire next year, and during the 2010 Special Session, which included federal money that will not be available during the next go-around.
The $3 billion gap represents half of the state’s spending. Where the money will come from and who will pay was the primary topic of conversation between the governor, members of the Humboldt County Commission and Winnemucca City Council.
TAXES: In conversation there appeared little the governor and local representatives couldn’t agree on – especially taxes to mining. Mining revenue is widely believed to be responsible for the economic bubble protecting the northern rural counties during the financial crisis impacting the rest of the state. Another widely held belief is that taxes to mining means fewer jobs.
The Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada is circulating a petition that, if successful, would change the way mines pay taxes. Currently mines are taxed on net proceeds; PLAN and other supporters would have mines pay a tax on gross receipts – like all other businesses. The Nevada Mine Association recently filed suit against those circulating the petition in an effort to stop it.
“Emotion trumps science,” Gibbons said while explaining that people just don’t understand how mining works. “People think it’s a bunch of guys in their pickup trucks with rakes and shovels in the back who are raking up buckets of gold to take to Canada. That’s just not how it works,” he said in reference to the high overhead incurred by mining.
Lost in the debate, noted Mayor Di An Putnam, are the many donations mining makes to local schools and communities that might have suffered more during the economic decline if not for the generosity of the mining companies.
In addition to the mining tax, the governor also spoke out against a broad-based business tax, which he said was just another name for an income tax, and a use tax on services, which could include everything from a shoe shine to a hair cut.
Mark Noonan: May Gov. Gibbons Have A Private Life?
The other day an aggressive television crew went after Governor Gibbons as he arrived at an airport – confronting him, it would seem, over his traveling with a woman who is alleged to have been his mistress prior to his divorce. An editorial over at Reno News and Review takes issue with this:
“We’d rather be boiled in oil than find ourselves on the same side with Gov. Jim Gibbons, but events last week make it necessary.
“No, we’re not talking about his role in the special session. There, he was as useless as ever.
“It’s the matter of his being confronted at the Reno airport as he arrived back from a governor’s conference in Washington, D.C., that prompts our taking his side…
“…But what was the camera crew doing there in the first place? Clearly, they had information that he had gone to the nation’s capital in the company of a woman who was named many months ago in his divorce action as his mistress.
“But that naming was then. Time has passed. The governor is separated from his wife, has dated a number of women since the separation, and he’s entitled to do so. What was newsworthy about his doing so again?”
What is judged to be “newsworthy” is, of course, entirely subjective. If I were running a newspaper then stories about Hollywood stars cheating on each other wouldn’t even appear – but such is the fodder of news organizations because it brings in readers/viewers (I would probably be a very unsuccessful newspaper owner). A certain set of people, apparently considered valuable by advertisers, are drawn like moths to a flame by scandal, especially if there is a sexual/adulterous angle to it.
What was newsworthy about Gibbons arrival with that woman? It was part of the salacious story of Gibbons’ divorce. I’m surprised that only one news crew was there – though that might merely be a reflection of Gibbons’ almost-certain loss in the upcoming GOP primary. He’s a bit old news, and may soon be a has-been. Now, if one of the two Republicans or one Democrat seeking to unseat him were to have a scandal, then there would be 50 screaming journalists at every stop.
Nevada Candidates Filed For Governor And Lt. Governor
From the Reno Gazette-Journal, these are the candidates who have filed to run for Governor so far:
Frederick D. Conquest (D)
Floyd Fitzgibbons (IAP)
Arthur F. Lampitt Jr. (L)
Stanleigh Harold Lusak (R)
Michael Montandan (R)
Brian Sandoval (R)
Aaron Yehuda Honig (I)
Governor Gibbons and Rory Reid have not filed yet, but have until Friday, March 12 to do so.
These candidates have filed to run for Lieutenant Governor:
Ryan Fitzgibbons, (IAP)
Robert E. Goodwin (D)
Brian Krolicki (R) incumbent
Robert S. Randazzo (D)
Jessica Sferrazza (D)
New Rasmussen Poll: Nevada Governor
Nevada Survey of 500 Likely Voters – March 3, 2010
Brian Sandoval (R) 53%
Rory Reid (D) 35%
Some other candidate 7%
Not Sure 5%Mike Montandon (R) 42%
Rory Reid (D) 37%
Some other candidate 13%
Not Sure 8%Jim Gibbons (R) 36%
Rory Reid (D) 44%
Some other candidate 15%
Not Sure 4%
Brian Sandoval (R) and Mike Montandon (R) can both beat Rory Reid (D). Our incumbent Governor, Jim Gibbons will not likely survive the primary.
Muth: Opponents To Budget Cuts Need To “Get Over It”
(Chuck Muth) – Las Vegas Sun reporter Richard Velotta inked a story on Friday that every gubernatorial candidate ought to read. Twice. Or more. The story explains how gaming giant Harrah’s avoided bankruptcy in the “Great Recession” by deploying “time-honored formulas of hard-nosed cost-cutting and getting back to basics.”
“Jan Jones, Harrah’s senior vice president of communications and government relations, recalled how she tried to fight dramatic cuts to her budget in 2008 by arguing her case with CEO Gary Lovemen,” Velotta reports. However, Lovemen didn’t buy it or budge.
“These are your numbers,” the CEO told Jones. “Make them work.”
And she did. So did the rest of the company. In fact, Velotta reports that in just nine months, “Harrah’s cut $550 million in annual costs.”
“Looking back at it,” Jones says of Lovemen’s tough love intransigence over budget cuts, “I know now that it really took a leader who was saying, ‘Hey, get over it.’”
And that’s exactly the attitude the governor of Nevada will need to take into the 2011 legislative session.
As we saw in the just-concluded special session, the majority of state legislators bent over backwards to avoid the dramatic but necessary budget cuts required by the ongoing Great Recession.
Instead, they raided local government piggy banks and hiked taxes and fees so as to avoid eliminating unnecessary programs, commissions and agencies (hello, Equal Rights Commission!), dramatically reducing public employee salaries (hello, Clark County firefighters!), laying off large numbers of non-essential government workers (hello, Department of Cultural Affairs!), and scaling back obscenely generous health care and retirement benefits (see, “SAGE Commission”).
Whoever the governor is next January, he’s gonna have to submit an extremely lean, fiscally responsible budget that doesn’t ask the government to do more with less, but demand that it do less with less. In other words, get back to basics. Only do those things which are truly essential and legitimate functions of government.
That also means getting rid of the cost-inflating organized labor welfare program known as “prevailing wage,” as well as dramatic reforms, if not outright repeal, of collective bargaining for government employees.
Legislators will, of course, throw a temper tantrum along the lines of Violet Beauregarde being told she can’t have an Oompa-Loompa. To which the next Nevada governor needs to reply, “Hey, get over it.”
Gov. Jim Gibbons, looking ahead to next year’s legislative session and an estimated $3 billion budget deficit, told that Nevada Appeal that “there are going to be a lot of agencies and departments that are going to have to be completely revamped. Some may be closed. Nevada may no longer be able to be everything to everybody.”
Well, um, yeah. So why wait, Governor? Why let the problem get worse over the next year and half? Why not revamp those agencies and departments NOW? Why not close many of them NOW? Why not lay off non-essential government employees NOW? Why not reduce unsustainable pay and benefit packages for state workers NOW?
And when legislators and bureaucrats and administrators squeal like stuck pigs, why not provide the necessary leadership and tell ‘em, “Hey, get over it”?
Is it too late for Mr. Lovemen to run for governor?
Gibbons Seeks Dismissal Of Mazzeo Lawsuit
From the Las Vegas Review-Journal:
Lawyers representing Gov. Jim Gibbons filed a motion late Friday that asks a judge to dismiss the federal lawsuit filed by a woman who claims the politician assaulted her in 2006.
According to the motion, every claim in the case stems from a “single and simple allegation”: that Gibbons battered Chrissy Mazzeo on Oct. 13, 2006, in the Howard Hughes Center parking garage.
“However, the physical evidence irrefutably proves that GIBBONS never touched MAZZEO in the parking garage that night,” according to the document. “In fact, the physical evidence irrefutably establishes that neither GIBBONS nor MAZZEO ever set foot inside the parking garage. As a result, all of MAZZEO’s claims asserted against GIBBONS must be dismissed.”
Mazzeo admitted during her deposition, according to the motion, “that she has no evidence whatsoever to support the vast majority of her inflammatory and salacious allegations of conspiracy among the various defendants, including GIBBONS, to deprive her of civil rights or retaliate against her, and in fact, she had no such evidence at the time she originally filed her complaint.”
Mazzeo claims she drank cocktails with Gibbons, then a candidate for governor, and others at McCormick & Schmick’s near Flamingo and Paradise roads.
She claims he later assaulted her in the nearby Howard Hughes Center parking garage and then used his influence to cover up the incident.
Gibbons Signs Medicaid Drug Bill Expected To Save $760,000
CARSON CITY – The fourth time was a charm for a bill in the Legislature to save the Medicaid program an estimated $760,000.
Gov. Jim Gibbons has signed Senate Bill 4 governing the list of preferred prescription drugs to be used by Medicaid recipients.
The bill had failed in three prior legislative sessions.
Medicaid, starting July 1, will be permitted to list certain medication brands involving antipsychotic, anticonvulsant and antidiabetic drugs as preferred medications.
Unless a physician prescribes otherwise, the Medicaid recipient will be required to use the drugs on the preferred list. Those who are taking another drug can continue with the same prescription.
By putting certain name brands on the preferred list, there is an increased use of those drugs, and the state gets a rebate.
A committee of pharmacists and physicians determines if a certain drug is equivalent to others in the same category and puts it on the preferred list. Medicaid has had a preferred drug list since 2004 for other medications and has saved the state $13 million.
This law expires in June 2011 unless renewed by the Legislature.
