After Hansen racism scandal, Nevada Republicans meet to vote again on leadership

By Kyle Roerink

Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2014 | 2 a.m.

For the second time since the Nov. 4 election, the Assembly Republican caucus will elect its leaders for the upcoming legislative session.

The 25-member caucus will meet at 6 this evening in Las Vegas to choose a new speaker and majority leader.

Las Vegas Assemblyman Paul Anderson is the front-runner to replace Ira Hansen as the speaker-elect. Las Vegas Assemblywoman Michele Fiore and Pahrump Assemblyman James Oscarson are vying to take the No. 2 spot as the chamber’s majority leader.

The caucus will have a closed-door vote at Anderson’s Las Vegas office.

The do-over will mark a fresh start for the party after a turbulent November. The month began with the party winning control of the Legislature and all statewide offices, but things took a turn when the Assembly Republicans’ original pick for speaker, Ira Hansen, stepped down from the top spot. Gov. Brian Sandoval asked him to resign his post after the Reno News and Review unearthed newspaper columns in which Hansen made derogatory remarks about minorities, women and members of the LGBT community.

Pundits also spent November questioning whether the caucus could overcome ideological infighting to pass a balanced budget, bolster state education spending and find more money to care for a growing Medicaid population.

Anderson is on a cakewalk to the top Assembly post. Last week, he was expected to face tight competition with Assemblyman Wes Duncan for the speakership, but Duncan’s name was nixed on Friday after he resigned his legislative post to work for Attorney General-elect Adam Laxalt.

Anderson is entering his second term and was originally elected by his Republican peers as majority leader. Once Hansen stepped down, Anderson’s name jumped to the top of the short list for Assembly speaker.

For the majority leader post, Republicans say there’s no hostility among Assembly members jockeying for leadership spots.

Both Oscarson and Fiore are entering their second terms and represent a mix of rural and urban constituents. The two said they were working to help unify their party.

“We’ve been at a standstill and behind the curve,” Oscarson said. “We need to get up to speed.”

Fiore said she had been working with members of her party to prepare for the session and introducing some of the chamber’s 13 new lawmakers to legislative life before they’re sworn into office.

“We will walk out of the caucus meeting unanimously united,” she said.

In their first sessions in Carson City, Fiore and Oscarson were pinned as conservatives whose ideologies were to the right of moderates. The Nevada Policy Research Institute ranked Fiore as the Assembly’s most conservative lawmaker in the 2013 session. It ranked Oscarson No. 15 out of 42 Assembly members.

Whoever becomes majority leader will have to help quell the perceived moderate vs far-right Republican divide in the Legislature. Public perception will play a role in who wins the leadership spots, said Nick Phillips, political director for the Clark County Republican Party.

“It will make a difference who is there because how they act and what alliances are formed on both sides of the aisle,” he said.

Oscarson said Assembly Republicans would have their own set of priorities and wouldn’t “rubber stamp” anything.

But the chamber, he added, won’t “be negative.”

“You have to unite rather than divide,” he said.

The last time Republicans held the majority in the Assembly was in 1985. They lost it after the next election.

The party is hoping to hang onto its new gains this time around. Assemblyman Pat Hickey, the Republican’s minority leader in the last session, was first in line to be speaker. But the caucus chose Hansen.

In an email he sent to his constituents Monday morning, Hickey wrote that his colleagues in the Assembly need to “prioritize what manageable reforms can receive broad-based support and pass this session so they have time to work and show demonstrable results.”