If you’re in the mood for a whole lot of really bad lust for political power, check out this expose in The Nevada Independent of a frustrated Nevada GOP that doesn’t hold the state Senate in its paws. You’d expect honorable politicos to wait for the next election, wouldn’t you? Not these guys – they’re going to use recalls to get what they want:
[State Senator Michael] Roberson and his spokesman have been uncharacteristically silent on the Woodhouse recall, which appears to be part of a coordinated and unprecedented series of recalls of state Senate Democratic caucus members. Indeed, secrecy has enveloped this effort by The Craven Caucus, which includes a former assemblyman (Stephen Silberkraus) who lost last year but hung around Carson City this session anyhow, and a losing candidate against Woodhouse less than a year ago, a charter school principal (Carrie Buck) who must be instilling wonderful values in her students.
The Nevada Independent already has traced the recalls of Woodhouse and Patricia Farley (who is not even running next year) to close Roberson ally Mark Hutchison, the lieutenant governor whose law firm is handling the recalls and whose elected job Roberson covets; and to Roberson crony Robert Uithoven, a Las Vegas Sands lobbyist whose employee solicited at least one member of the Farley recall committee. (That Uithoven staffer offered this when confronted by The Indy’s Megan Messerly: “I have no comment. I have nothing to say about it. I’ve got to go.”) …
The real secret here, though, is not who is behind this. The dirty secret here is this is grounded not in political principles but in campaign panic because the Republicans essentially have no chance to take the state Senate at the ballot in ‘18.
Even if you succumb to that trifecta of temporary amnesia, ask yourself this question: If all of this is so righteous, if the grounds are really there, why is there this conspiracy of secrecy on what should be public information? Even if they are not required by a typically porous Nevada law to reveal their reasons until they submit the signatures, why won’t they talk about their putative reasons for trying to recall these senators?
I’ll tell you why: Because they are desperate, because they know they are unlikely to win back the Senate at the ballot next year and because….they can. That is the standard in the Era of Trump, a perversion of the Nike slogan applied to campaigns and politics: Just Do It.
And if we were to put these guys under the microscope, would we find a bunch of second-raters? Any Nevada readers out there who’d care to comment, just hit the mail link. But that’s how this smells – they’ve lost command of the legislature, and they will do anything to get it back. This is the attitude of the political juvenile, who thinks it’s all about being in control – not governing wisely in concert with members of the other party. It’s having a focus roughly half an inch in front of their noses, with no cares for the future. Do they think this imminent debacle will be forgotten, by either the citizens or the other party?
Of course, if they do have some sort of scandal on the Democrats, then a recall is appropriate. But this ridiculous secrecy is not indicative that they have anything more than just an itch that needs to be scratched. And that itch is all about power.
