Nevada giant remembered for consensus building

By Mary Manning

Friday, Feb. 1, 2008 | 5:30 p.m.

Standing at 6-foot-3, lobbyist Jim Joyce always stood tall in lawmakers’ eyes when he roamed the halls of the Carson City capitol building during legislative sessions.

In daughter Marilee Joyce’s tribute to her father, “The Gentle Giant,” a collection of essays, the words most often used to describe Jim Joyce were his uncanny ability to build consensus and his integrity.

Joyce will once again be honored at the first event of the political communications program created in his name at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Panelists Frank Fahrenkopf, Jr., co-chairman of the Commission on Presidential Debates; Jon Ralston, Sun columnist and political pundit, and Reno Gazette-Journal reporter Anjeanette Damon will discuss the impact of the debates on this year’s presidential election.

Presented by the Jim Joyce Endowment for Political Communications, the event begins at 7 p.m. Wednesday in the new Joe Crowley Student Union.

“What an appropriate way to honor his legacy,” said son Robin Joyce, chair of the Jim Joyce Political Communications Committee. “He helped to define gentlemanly statesmanship.”

Political communications programs are rare, featured in only “four or five” colleges and universities across the country, Joyce said.

Robin Joyce said his father would be proud of the quality of talent and mix of politics and journalism on the first panel.

Fahrenkopf is a lawyer and president and CEO of the American Gaming Association. He gained national name recognition during the 1980s when he served as chairman of the Republican party for six of President Ronald Reagan’s eight years in the White House. He also served as chairman of the Republican National Committee longer than any person in the 20th century.

Ralston has been reporting and commenting on Nevada politics and public affairs for almost two decades. He has a bachelor of arts in English from Cornell University and a master’s in journalism from the University of Michigan. In addition to writing his Sun column, Ralston publishes a daily e-mail newsletter with insider political information and hosts the television show “Face to Face,” a 30-minute interview program Monday through Friday on Las Vegas One, Cox Cable Channel 19.

Damon has covered Nevada politics for the Reno Gazette-Journal since 2003 and has been a reporter at that newspaper since 1997. She is a graduate of the University of Nevada, Reno.

“I’m just so proud the university thought enough to put the endowment together,” Robin Joyce said.

Born Sept. 23, 1939, in Denver, James Joyce and his family moved to Las Vegas for the boy’s health after he contracted rheumatic fever as a child.

After graduating from Las Vegas High School, Joyce started at Nevada Southern University (now UNLV) in Las Vegas, then transferred to the Reno campus.

One of Joyce’s first political campaigns when he was president of Alpha Tau Omega, a fraternity at the University of Nevada, Reno, catapulted future U.S. senator and Nevada governor Richard Bryan to the office of student body president in 1955.

"Jim Joyce was, in his time, considered without peer in terms of his

political communications skills," Bryan said.

Not just a print or television reporter, Joyce became a key aide to Sen.

Howard Cannon, D-Nev., one of the most powerful Nevada senators in the

1960s, Bryan said. Joyce also ran his own consulting agency.

"He was part of the evolving journalism of today," Bryan said.

Bryan and Nevada State Sen. William Raggio, the Senate majority leader, are co-chairs of the Jim Joyce Endowment for Political Communications, which was created last year.

Joyce managed nearly 300 political campaigns before his death in 1993 and won 90 percent of them.