Brian Sandoval’s campaign for governor stumbles out of the gate

By Michael Mishak

Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2009 | 2 a.m.

When the state teachers union gathered to endorse a candidate for governor last month, board members had a short list: Democrat Rory Reid or Republican Mike Montandon.

GOP front-runner Brian Sandoval didn’t make the cut. He hadn’t returned a questionnaire the candidates were sent to get their views on education issues.

But in between candidate interviews that Friday afternoon, Sandoval called the union’s political consultant. He wanted an extension, saying he needed more time to consult with his campaign.

The board said no, ultimately deciding to back Reid, the Clark County Commission chairman. (Gov. Jim Gibbons returned the questionnaire but declined to be interviewed by the union.)

Lynne Warne, president of the Nevada State Education Association, said the board found Sandoval’s actions baffling. Although the union is generally aligned with Democrats, it has endorsed Republicans in the past, including Sandoval when he was a candidate for the Assembly in 1996. Also, she said the candidates had a month to return the union’s questionnaire.

“He knows the routine,” Warne said. “The board was not comfortable with the way his campaign was set up.”

The teachers aren’t alone. The endorsement episode was the latest in what is shaping up as something of a head-scratching campaign, according to Republican observers who are growing concerned about the direction of Sandoval’s organization.

The Sandoval campaign dismissed the criticism. “How we got into this race is old news,” spokeswoman Mary-Sarah Kinner said. “We’re looking forward to moving Nevada forward. We’re focused on how to get Nevada working again.”

Experts and partisan strategists have been confused from the outset, starting with the fact that Sandoval was recruited off the federal bench by two of the state’s most powerful lobbyists, Pete Ernaut and Greg Ferraro.

After retiring from the lifetime appointment, Sandoval announced his candidacy in a series of newspaper and television interviews. He then took a job with Jones Vargas, one of Nevada’s most prominent law firms with a blue-chip clientele, including mining, gaming and residential developers.

He has been largely quiet in the past three months.

By most accounts, Sandoval’s campaign fits with the state’s long history of “anointment politics,” wherein a group of power brokers recruits and coalesces around a single candidate. Campaigns are fought on the airwaves, not on the ground — with an air of inevitability.

In 1998, Kenny Guinn, a banking and utility executive and former Clark County School District superintendent, was the beneficiary of this process. Four years later, he rolled to re-election with 68 percent of the vote.

Likewise, the establishment rallied around Gibbons in 2006.

But times have changed. After the crushing defeats of last year’s elections, Republicans worry about an anointment campaign in the age of Obama.

As one Republican consultant put it: “I’m wondering if they’re running a 2003 campaign in 2009.”

Republicans worry about the perceived message and the candidate’s ground game.

“It’s a traditional anointment strategy but it might not be the right environment for that strategy,” said Dave Damore, a UNLV political scientist. “The electorate is not interested in establishment candidates right now.”

Being the establishment pick could hurt in a Republican primary, particularly at a time when the upstart Tea Party movement is challenging candidates’ conservative bona fides, experts said.

Also, the Obama campaign revolutionized political organizing here, methodically building a grass-roots network of battle-ready precinct captains and volunteers while registering tens of thousands of new voters. For Republicans, the results were devastating.

On Election Day, Democrats had a voter-registration edge of more than 100,000 people. Obama won the state by 12 points and Democrats retook control of the Legislature for the first time in nearly two decades.

The Nevada Democratic Party has worked to retain that organization, in hopes that it will pay off for the party ticket again next year. Republicans, on the other hand, have struggled to build a ground game in the wake of the 2008 elections.

Still, Eric Herzik, a political scientist at UNR, said Sandoval shouldn’t expect more than an assist from the state party.

“He had better have a ground presence so he can touch the Republican primary voter,” Herzik said. “Sandoval’s biggest vulnerability is that the base is far more conservative and more like Jim Gibbons than the rest of the state.”

Others, however, said Sandoval was smart to lay low and keep quiet, at least until Jan. 15, when candidates must report their campaign contributions to the secretary of state’s office.

“They’re focused on what they should be doing right now: Go out and raise money, raise money, raise money,” said Chuck Muth, the onetime Nevada Republican Party leader and conservative activist. “They want a fundraising number so high and insurmountable that Republican supporters will say, ‘You can’t beat Brian Sandoval.’ ”

Sun reporter J. Patrick Coolican contributed to this story.

CORRECTION: Lynne Warne, president of the Nevada State Education Association, incorrectly said in Wednesday's Sun that her union endorsed Brian Sandoval for Nevada attorney general in 2002. In fact, the union endorsed his Democratic opponent in that race. The union did however endorse Sandoval for a second term in the Assembly in 1996. | (December 16, 2009)