Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Charlie Waterman, a fighter and a believer

If Charlie Waterman died of a heart attack, it must have been massive.

No one I have known in two decades-plus covering Nevada politics had more heart than Waterman, who controlled the Clark County Democratic Party for that long. You have heard of people who relish a good fight Waterman reveled in the hurly-burly of combat, whether it was maintaining his party chairmanship, eviscerating a Republican or standing up for a cause.

Waterman, derided often in recent years as part of the dinosaur caucus of the party, was an anachronism even before he stepped down in 2005. Most political bosses these days are akin to bank managers, responsible for watching over money funneled through the party by candidates and special interests, and not expected to make any waves. They are supposed to be puppets of the elected elite, talking only when their ventriloquist masters allow them to do so.

Waterman was no puppet. And boy, did he make waves.

I think I am safe in saying that no one who knew Charlie Waterman friend or foe did not at one time or another want to kill him. He didn’t have just a gigantic heart; his liver and gallbladder were sizable, too, judging by his often bilious nature.

That he lived to be 79 is remarkable considering he seemed to be perpetually pugnacious he would fight about anything and he would stand up to anyone. And he absolutely hated to lose.

His longtime friend and fellow big-hearted Democrat, Harriet Trudell, recalled an incident at the 1984 Democratic National Convention in San Francisco, so long ago that Randolph Townsend, now a GOP state senator, was still a Democrat.

“Every morning the boys would go out and run,” Trudell recalled Thursday. “And (longtime activist) Naomi Millisor was asked to pick the best legs. She picked Townsend. Charlie didn’t talk to her for two years.”

It was that kind of irascible irrationality that made Waterman so endearing and so frustrating for so many. One of those was Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who sent out this statement Thursday:

“I was saddened to learn of the passing of Charlie Waterman. In addition to a long, distinguished career as an attorney, Charlie dedicated his life to building the foundation of the Clark County Democratic Party. As a longtime friend, my thoughts go out to his friends and family during this difficult time.”

I laughed out loud when I read that because Waterman drove Reid batty. The senator tried many times each time unsuccessfully to oust Waterman from the chairmanship of the party in favor of someone more pliable. Indeed, when I began covering politics in 1986, Reid and other establishment figures were trying to insert an attorney (now an assemblyman) named Tick Segerblom into the job. But Waterman, using every trick in his ample playbook, held on to the post.

That’s why when I read CityLife reporter Emmily Bristol’s fine piece on Waterman’s retirement three years ago, I also laughed audibly at this line: “His next challenge? Taking the backroom juice-jobs out of politics and bringing back politics based on philosophy.”

Now that is funny. No one orchestrated a backroom juice-job inside the Democratic Party better than Waterman. But he also was not involved in politics just to elect candidates he was a true believer in liberal causes and some might say (I bet Reid would) that he lost sight of the goal at the ballot because he became so consumed with the internecine warfare.

Waterman was the anti-Michael Dukakis it was about ideology, not competence. Pragmatism was not in the Waterman lexicon.

But believe he did. There was no gray area for the gray-maned silver fox. Waterman would eviscerate anyone who said or wrote anything favorable about a Republican or a GOP policy. (He once wrote a scathing letter to the editor about something I had written. It was brutal.)

As Trudell remembered, Waterman believed in social justice and insisted the Democratic Party was the only vehicle to achieve that goal.

“One day he came in screaming at me,” she recalled. “His face was contorted because they were trying to abolish the inheritance tax. He was screaming that we had become a country ... to serve the ultrarich.”

Waterman was fighting until the end the last time I saw him he was at the disastrous county convention Feb. 23, battling for the rights of some delegates who believed their credentials had been unfairly denied. He looked as feisty, as spry, as ever.

Waterman’s heart may have stopped Thursday. But it will forever beat in the body politic of the Clark County Democratic Party.

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