Former legislator McNeel dies at 55

Richard Kenneth McNeel, the first Republican from North Las Vegas to be elected to the Nevada Legislature and a driving force behind the unsuccessful effort to repeal the state's right-to-work law in the early 1970s, has died. He was 55.

McNeel, who served in the Assembly during the 1973 session and lost a 1974 bid to the state Senate, died Sunday at MountainView Hospital.

Services for the Southern Nevada resident of 36 years will be at 10 a.m. Thursday at the Southern Nevada Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Boulder City. Palm Mortuary is handling the arrangements.

"I thought he was a fine legislator -- a real straightforward guy," said Zel Lowman, a fellow Republican Assemblyman who served 1967-75 and as Assembly majority leader in 1971.

"He spoke his mind. When so many others were beating around the bush, not Richard. I guess I liked him because that's how I was."

Lowman, who at 76 runs a local mom-and-pop real estate business with his wife Mary, said he and McNeel left the Assembly at a time when the party was split along North-South lines and the rural district representatives were showing little concern for the needs of Clark County.

It indeed hurt the GOP as the Assembly went from 22 Republicans and 18 Democrats in 1971 to 31 Democrats and nine Republicans by 1975. That made McNeel's success at getting elected during that period even more remarkable.

In June 1972, McNeel, a virtual unknown in political circles, announced he would try to unseat incumbent Dave Branch, the former chief deputy registrar of voters in Clark County.

If Branch had nothing else going in his favor, it was that he was a Democrat in a district that never before had sent a Republican to Carson City as either a Senator or an Assemblyman.

McNeel, then an electrician for Bechtel Corp., ran on a platform for better consumer education and protection laws and for realignment of overlapping government agencies to provide more effective welfare programs for the poor.

McNeel upset Branch by a narrow margin.

In 1973, McNeel, a second generation electrical worker union member, authored a bill to repeal the state's right-to-work law. The law, which is still in effect, provides that workers do not have to join a union to secure a job.

Born Oct. 25, 1942, in Beaumont, Texas, McNeel attended the University of Southern California and Bethany College, where he majored in sociology.

McNeel, who married Karen (nee van Buren) McNeel, moved to Clark County in 1962. She survives him.

An Army veteran of the Vietnam War, McNeel attained the rank of first lieutenant.

McNeel joined the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 357 in 1968 and graduated from the electrical workers apprenticeship program in 1974.

That same year, McNeel opted to take what would be an unsuccessful shot at the Senate seat held by Democratic incumbent Gene Echols, the former mayor of North Las Vegas.

McNeel also was a past director of the Nevada State Apprenticeship Council.

In addition to his wife, McNeel is survived by two sons, Richard McNeel of Stockton, Calif., and James McNeel of Las Vegas; a daughter, Jennifer Fitzpatrick of Las Vegas; five brothers, Charles, Clark and Bobby McNeel, all of Las Vegas, James McNeel of Defiance, Ohio, and Bobby McNeel of Yucaipa, Calif.; and three sisters, Shirley Ahlke of Houston, Hazel Mabry of Las Vegas and Rachel Brandon of Costa Mesa, Calif.

DONATIONS: In McNeel's memory to the Nevada Association of the Handicapped.

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