Too much money, too few issues

The cue ball ends up just sitting there. A half-dozen times Brian Heidtman leans over the table to line up his shot. But someone had to go and mention politics, and now his pool stick may as well be a chalked-tipped pointer. Forget stripes and solids. He's thinking Democrats and Republicans.

"You know what it is? You know what the big issue is?" Heidtman said, spinning away from the table and jabbing at the air with his stick. Rubbing his right thumb and index finger together, he answers his own question before anyone can jump in.

"It's money. Big money," he said. "Who's got enough time to study the issues, analyze the issues and then run for office? Who's got time to do that when you have to work all day to make a living? The rich. Rich people don't have anything else to do, so they get into politics. It gets them out of the house."

If Dennis Miller ever tires of delivering his trademark rants, Heidtman's the guy to replace him. The 34-year-old construction worker with vapor-tail sideburns and gold-rimmed glasses has the rat-a-tat patter down. He has the caustic sarcasm. Better yet, he needs no cue cards.

"It doesn't matter if you have the best candidate," Heidtman said. "I don't care if it's a paraplegic homeless guy who's the greatest guy in the world saying all the right things. If he doesn't have the money, he doesn't have a chance."

Hanging out at PT's Pub near Spring Mountain Road on a recent weeknight with a friend, Heidtman comes across as if he were the poster boy for disaffected voters -- a man who would visit his local precinct only if it offered a promotion along the lines of "Cast a Vote, Get a Beer."

Yet once the fight-the-power riffs subside and his spleen has had its 20-minute venting, the registered Democrat reveals an almost syrupy sense of patriotism. The same person who insists "my vote doesn't matter" nonetheless plans to stick his discontent where it counts -- in the ballot box.

"Yeah, I'll vote," Heidtman said with a shrug. "If you don't, you can't complain."

His rationale may stand as the closest thing to a ringing endorsement that democracy will receive this year from Nevada's largest voting bloc -- average citizens. If candidates in particular and the civic-minded in general are desperate for promising signs about the state of politics, they should savor this morsel of hope: Participatory cynicism just might be gaining on stay-at-home indifference.

Or at least that's the impression voters give when asked what issues concern them heading into Tuesday's statewide primaries. At first, they offer responses that sound as if they're straight off a campaign brochure. Build more schools. Control Las Vegas' helter-skelter growth. Keep nuclear waste out of Nevada. Protect workers' rights.

Then, their duty to speak as responsible voters fulfilled, they 'fess up that what really will draw them to the polls is an entirely different issue: a lack of issues. More to the point, a lack of debate on the issues by candidates.

At a time when, to paraphrase former House Speaker Tip O'Neill, all politics is lowbrow, Nevadans voice a genuine desire to see more substance, less sniping. And they voice equally genuine disgust at watching politicians blow millions of dollars on low-concept attack ads that, for instance, show photos of one candidate being placed over those of his opponent. With their elected officials reduced to playing campaign solitaire, voters are looking for a game of 52-pickup this election year.

"They waste all that money on saying nothing that people want to hear," Heidtman said. "Someone needs to wake them up."

The good news for candidates who persist in maligning opponents instead of defining themselves is that they may actually annoy people into voting. The bad news comes only after the polls close, Elizabeth Adelbai said.

"When candidates are not paying attention to the issues, you're not going to pay attention to them," said Adelbai, a porter at the Fremont hotel-casino since 1975. "If all they're doing is talking bad about the other person, you're not going to vote for them."

The Culinary Union member took part in early voting Tuesday while wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan "Culinary Families Vote!" Adelbai, 38, would say only that she supported Maggie Carlton, a casino worker and union member running for state Senate.

A Guatemala native who came to the United States in the late 1960s, Adelbai has spent the past several weeks hoofing door-to-door on behalf of the union to urge people to vote. She applauds the campaigns of state Sen. Joe Neal and Las Vegas Mayor Jan Jones, both Democratic hopefuls for governor, for emphasizing issues over invective. Still, Adelbai feels blue-collar workers remain the ugly stepsisters, stood up by politicians more interested in courting white-collar contributors.

"We need people in politics who will look out for us a little more," Adelbai said as she sat in the union's offices. "Nobody's talking about us. They're talking about each other, or they're talking with the people who have the money. Not even Jones. She's talked about the schools, the classrooms. She doesn't talk about us, the working people. I haven't seen that in any of her commercials."

More dispiriting for Glen Yuen has been the U.S. Senate race. As Democratic incumbent Sen. Harry Reid and his likely Republican challenger, U.S. Rep John Ensign, trade potshots using the aforementioned mug shots, Yuen finds himself wondering whether he'll vote for either man on Election Day.

"It makes you want to put 'none of the above,' " said the 32-year-old Yuen, a student in a master's program at UNLV, as he strolled out of a campus bookstore. "If you've been there (the Senate) for 12 years like Reid, why do you even talk about the other candidate? Talk about what you've been doing for 12 years and what you're going to do."

The political low road during Election '98 in Nevada has become more congested than the Spaghetti Bowl at rush hour. That hasn't stopped Kenny Guinn and Aaron Russo, the leading Republican candidates for governor, from merging into traffic and laying on the horn.

Russo continues to hammer away at Guinn's record as former head of Southwest Gas Corp. and has labeled him a RINO, or Republican In Name Only. The Guinn camp has countered in recent weeks with a TV ad that features excerpts from Russo's 1996 anti-government video "Mad as Hell." The spot, which shows a long-haired Russo stomping around a stage and looking somewhat similar to an agitated Rosie O'Donnell, brands him as potentially "embarrassing to Nevada, dangerous as governor."

Individual allegiances aside, among Republican faithful the only embarrassing and dangerous aspect to such bare-knuckled verbal sparring is that it leaves voters with no better understanding of the candidates.

Jim Sundstrom, 29, co-owner of an ice-cream truck company called JJ's Italian Ice, deals with kids every day on the job. Parked down the street from William R. Lummis Elementary in Summerlin last week on the first day of school, he said he would like to hear more from Guinn and Russo on education. Trouble is, they're acting like children.

"I lean toward Republicans, and I'm going to vote, but that whole campaign is kind of strange," said Sundstrom, who favors Guinn. "I'm a little disappointed, but it's what people have come to expect these days. You don't see too many campaigns that are about the issues."

Sandy Hilpipre feels likewise. A 47-year-old resource aide at an elementary school, she wore a small bandage around her right arm as she exited the United Blood Services Center near Charleston Boulevard. Having donated a pint of her blood, she criticized Guinn and Russo for recklessly spilling the party's.

"They're not really talking about the issues. Basically, they're just bashing each other," said Hilpipre, a Guinn backer who also praised Jones for hitting the issues instead of opponents. "They act like we're stupid, like we want to hear all that dirty politics."

It's not difficult to figure out why politicians rear back and sling mud at one another. Between work, families and the pressures of day-to-day life, most people find scant time to read newspapers or attend candidate forums. That leaves TV. But while it sounds like a noble idea to talk policy in a 30-second ad, conventional political wisdom holds that explaining the intricacies of health-care reform will yield changed channels, not new supporters. Hence, the airwaves crackle with political spots that veer closer to "South Park" than C-SPAN.

Even so, the time may have arrived for candidates to consider installing V-chips in their TV campaigns.

Raising her two sons, Douglas, 10, and Alex, 12, keeps Donna Bell beyond busy. To keep informed, she has time only to flick on the tube to catch the day's news, and by her own admission she tunes out a lot of the political blather. Sometimes that puts her in the dark about who's running for what -- such as the candidate who knocked on her door three weeks ago.

"I didn't know who he was. I didn't know his name. I hadn't called the cable company or anything like that. I'm not going to open the door for him," Bell said, laughing.

As she bowled with her sons at Mahoney's Silver Nugget in North Las Vegas, Bell, 45, said she worries mostly about local matters, from zoning variances to neighborhood crime. Yet she makes a point of voting every election, even if it means "just putting down my little 'X's at the last minute." And when she notices a candidate on the ballot who has aired attack ads, Bell marks that little 'X' in the opposite column.

"When I see that kind of stuff on TV, I vote for the other person," she said.

Davene Forchae takes a similar approach. She's swamped with the demands of raising her 2-year-old daughter and running a real estate company with her husband out of their Summerlin home. As a result, and more than she would like, TV ads provide nearly all of what she knows about candidates.

"I've never really been that interested in politics," said Forchae, 35, pushing her daughter out of Vons in a grocery cart. "But I still vote. And when I see mud-slinging, that turns me off."

As the bleating rhetoric of the campaign season reaches storm-siren levels, there remains one segment of Nevadans whom candidates can't scare away from the polls -- because they're staying home regardless. Think of them as the passionately apathetic: Nonvoters who know the issues and candidates, but who believe for one reason or another that the only intelligent choice is to abstain.

Johnnie Brown has never voted. He sees no point. The Las Vegas Hilton kitchen worker said the Culinary Union, more than any politician or party, earns his loyalty because "it does something," including providing his health insurance and pension. The 48-year-old North Las Vegas resident views politics as a chew toy for the affluent and democracy as little more than a caste system wrapped in a Constitution.

"The more money you have, the more you're interested in what the government is doing," Brown said. "The more money you have, the more influence you have in what the government does. When Steve Wynn talks, he's talking for the politicians. But if you don't have money, I don't care how many times you vote. It doesn't matter."

For Claude and Carol Knerr, recently transplanted Californians, the sticking point is character. The couple said they're sick of politicians who don't have any, citing as an example Jones turning up at Nevada Ethics Commission hearings almost as often as its members.

"The way they act here is ridiculous," said Claude Knerr, 57. "It looks like they're on the take -- all of 'em."

If they hope to hold down the number of Knerrs and Browns among eligible voters, candidates might heed the words of Alec Williams and Rita Raines. The Treasure Island workers -- he's a bartender, she's a cocktail waitress -- admit they're on the fence about voting this year. Raines said the rights of workers, Las Vegas' growth and too many other issues have gone untouched while candidates flail away at one another.

"It's like the pot calling the kettle black," said Raines, 36. "Every other ad on TV is one politician bashing another. It's purely negative."

The next several weeks will determine whether Williams and Raines go to the polls Nov. 3. As the couple sees it, if candidates want their votes, all they really need to do is stop yapping at one another.

"It's up to them," Williams said. "They have to start talking to us."

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