Giunchigliani regarded as mayoral candidate who fights for the little guy

By Delen Goldberg

Friday, March 18, 2011 | 2:01 a.m.

Clark County Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani had just declared her candidacy for Las Vegas mayor at a Hispanics in Politics meeting last month when member Carmen Ruiz announced that the annual Cinco de Mayo celebration needed a new venue.

Giunchigliani jumped to her feet. “I’ll see if the (Clark County) Government Center is available. Maybe you can have it there,” she said.

She wasn’t pandering for votes. Most in the room had already committed to support her.

The Government Center turned out to be booked that day, but Giunchigliani tried. Supporters say it’s that kind of effort and devotion to constituents that sets her apart from her opponents.

Giunchigliani (pronounced: June-kill-e-ah-knee) is one of 18 mayoral candidates fighting for a spot in the June general election, presumably against Las Vegas first lady Carolyn Goodman. Most polls have shown Giunchigliani neck and neck with County Commissioner Larry Brown for the second spot on the ballot.

If no candidate receives a majority of votes in the April 5 primary, which will likely be the case, the two candidates with the highest tallies face off in June.

A mainstay in Nevada politics, Giunchigliani, a special-education teacher, is probably best known for her advocacy on behalf of underrepresented groups. She has fought to include nondiscriminatory language in government contracts and has been hailed by the Martin Luther King Committee, Humane Society and Human Rights Campaign. When Gov. Bob Miller declared a Chris Giunchigliani Day in 1992, it was to honor her work as “a fighter and advocate for the little guy.”

But the left-leaning tendencies that endear Giunchigliani to many could be her biggest liability in the mayoral race. She is the most liberal candidate.

While an assemblywoman, Giunchigliani voted for millions of dollars in new taxes, and she’s the only leading mayoral candidate who is open to the idea of tax increases. She’s unapologetically pro-union and prides herself on fighting for workers’ rights.

“All rights are human rights,” she says. “When you build a community, you make sure everyone is created equal.”

Like Brown, Giunchigliani will have to overcome criticism for her union support. Many Southern Nevadans are fed up with public workers’ high salaries, especially in light of recent sick-leave abuses by county firefighters.

At a Sun City Conservative forum last month, seniors peppered Giunchigliani with tough questions about the firefighters’ actions and asked why as a county commissioner she did nothing to stop it.

Giunchigliani explained that when she learned of the abuses, she immediately called for an audit and investigation. She wanted the firefighters fired, she said.

So far, the sheriff, district attorney’s office and FBI haven’t taken up the case, she said.

That Giunchigliani attended the forum is telling given the conservative bent of the audience. She was one of the only Democrats to show up, despite her advisers being against it.

“It’s important to hear everybody’s perspective,” Giunchigliani said. “I promised that I would attend every debate.”

Giunchigliani is outspoken. She is often the first candidate to answer hard questions while some of her opponents appear to hope their dodging the question will go unnoticed. But she’s also more likely to ask for ideas before presenting her own.

Of the major mayoral candidates, Giunchigliani has the most specific and well-developed proposals for improving Las Vegas.

A week after announcing her candidacy, and before the candidates started appropriating their opponents’ ideas, Giunchigliani listed dozens of proposals.

Among them: collaborate with the Smith Center for Performing Arts and high schools to create a theater district; move the state’s medical school to Southern Nevada and develop a teaching hospital through a partnership with the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health; build a school downtown where students can learn culinary arts and grow herbs to sell to chefs on the Strip, raising scholarship money in the process; and create a revolving loan for small businesses using redevelopment dollars.

Giunchigliani, 56, started from humble beginnings but worked her way into Nevada’s political elite. Born in Italy to Americans, she was raised in Chicago, the oldest of six children in a working-class family. She waited tables and tended bar to pay her way through college where she earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in special education. She moved to Las Vegas in 1978 to attend UNLV.

She taught special education in the Clark County School District for 25 years, but has been on unpaid leave since June 2007 because of her political obligations.

Before becoming a county commissioner, she was an assemblywoman for 16 years. Her husband, Gary Gray, is her campaign director.

Giunchigliani is modeling her mayoral races on past victories. She has never lost a race.

She is a dogged campaigner with a fierce ground game. In her quest to be mayor, she has called thousands of voters and knocked on hundreds of doors. Most Saturday mornings she can be found walking neighborhoods.

Those efforts will be a key part of her campaign, since she has never represented a substantial portion of the city and many voters don’t know her.

Giunchigliani is also actively lobbying minority communities, groups often overlooked in municipal races. She released a Spanish-language TV ad and regularly attends women’s caucuses, Chinatown celebrations and gay-pride events — whether she is running for office or not.

Realistically speaking, Giunchigliani needs the ground game. She significantly trails Goodman, who has parlayed her husband’s popularity into front-runner status. The two share similar profiles as women and former teachers, and both have made education the centerpieces of their campaigns, but Goodman has far more name recognition.

The outcome will most likely come down to a few thousand votes as mayoral races traditionally attract a small pool of voters.

Giunchigliani, who often repeats on the campaign trail the mantra “if I wouldn’t put it in my backyard, I won’t put it in yours,” hopes her record sets her apart.

“It’s about putting people back in politics,” Giunchigliani says. “I want to represent the people, not me.”

CORRECTION: The story originally said Giunchigliani was the only Democrat to show up at a Sun City Conservative forum. Democrat Steve Ross also attended. | (March 18, 2011)