Why winning Legislature got Democrats only so far

By J. Patrick Coolican

Sunday, May 17, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Democrats won a big victory last year, taking control of the state Senate and securing a veto-proof majority in the Assembly.

So why does it feel like Republicans are running things?

The Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce — whose members made subprime loans and built houses no one wants today — is getting traction with its list of demands.

Republicans, following the chamber’s lead, are agreeing to the smallest possible tax increase to fill the state’s $3 billion budget hole, and seem likely to get all kinds of concessions in return, including cuts in public employee pay and benefits.

The mining industry will likely leave the session untouched, despite reaping incredible profits with the soaring price of gold and benefiting from a highly favorable tax environment in Nevada.

So what’s going on here?

Certainly it empowers the Republicans somewhat that Gov. Jim Gibbons, the first-term Republican, can wield his veto pen, however isolated he’s been this session.

But something else is at work.

Real power: That’s when you retain your grip on the mechanics of government even after you have been voted out.

The key to accomplishing this is putting processes in place that will thwart your opponents once they take power. It’s like vacating a house but having its water main diverted to your new house.

The most important mechanism Republicans put in place was the requirement that a tax increase be passed with two-thirds of the vote. It cast Republican governance in stone.

There’s an analogy here. Back when the New Deal/Great Society coalition dominated American politics for decades, Democrats put in place programs and mechanisms that put a permanent stamp on government.

Once Social Security and Medicare were in place, the American middle class was never going to allow anyone to touch them, even when they elected Ronald Reagan.

Once the Environmental Protection Agency was up and running, it was politically impossible to shut it down, even though Republicans hated it.

Labor laws and the National Labor Relations Board ensured that at least skeletal support for trade unionism remained in place, even after Republicans took over.

But in Nevada, more than the two-thirds rule on taxes is at work helping Republicans.

The 120-day session, which Senate Minority Leader Bill Raggio put in place in the 1990s, creates a frenzied pace in which legislators have to work like crazy just to keep government running. The rule is given real force because only the governor can call them back into session after 120 days.

The deadline makes real fundamental reform, real government activism, almost impossible.

Resistance to calls to move the capital to Southern Nevada has been another ally of conservative government. Most legislators are isolated from their constituents, who have no contact with the process and don’t participate in it.

Who does that leave?

Lobbyists, many of whom represent Republican business interests.

At the beginning of the session, those lobbyists grumbled that they were locked out of the process.

Not anymore.

They all seem to have smiles on their faces these days.

What’s the line? You can’t win for losing?