Comedian Stephen Colbert skewers Nevada assemblyman over slavery remarks

By Andrew Doughman

Friday, Nov. 1, 2013 | 9:48 a.m.

Nevada Assemblyman Jim Wheeler made national television Thursday night as the subject of ridicule on “The Colbert Report.”

Comedian and host Stephen Colbert lampooned the Republican from Gardnerville for statements Wheeler made earlier this year in which he said he’d vote for slavery if his constituents wanted him to.

“When we voters elect someone, we become his master and he must do what we say under the threat of violence,” Colbert joked. “There’s only one word for that: democracy. And this promise makes a hell of a bumper sticker: Jim Wheeler: You want slaves? You got ‘em.”

Wheeler, a Republican from Gardnerville, had been talking to a crowd of Storey County Republicans in August he when said, “yeah, I would” vote for slavery if that’s what his constituents wanted.

“If that’s what they wanted, I’d have to hold my nose, I’d have to bite my tongue and they’d probably have to hold a gun to my head, but, yeah, if that’s what the citizens of the, if that’s what the constituency wants that elected me, that’s what they elected me for,” he said. “That’s what a republic is about. You elected a person for your district to do your wants and wishes, not the wants and wishes of a special interest, not his own wants and wishes, yours.”

Colbert joked that critics of Wheeler’s were the real racists for pouncing on the Nevada assemblyman and making assumptions.

“His critics are really the racists for assuming that Jim Wheeler meant black slavery. Maybe he would vote to enslave Latinos or young Greek boys or white people. He’ll enslave anyone you want.”