Columnist Erin Neff: How might Cannon have altered history?

Erin Neff covers politics for the Sun. She can be reached at (702) 259-4062 or by e-mail at [email protected].

THE DEATH Wednesday of former U.S. Sen. Howard Cannon gave current Yucca Mountain opponents a chance to muse on what could have been.

Not what-if the 90-year-old had lived to see another chapter in the ongoing Yucca dispute, but how he might have changed history if not for an event 20 years ago.

Cannon wasn't supposed to lose a 1982 re-election bid to Republican upstart Chic Hecht. But he did. And arguably the state's biggest political upset also made it easier five years later to pass the so-called "Screw Nevada" bill designating Yucca Mountain as the nation's nuclear waste dump.

"In his heyday, Sen. Cannon was an extremely powerful man," said U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., who was an intern for Cannon in 1973. "One never knows what might have happened, but he may very well have been effective in blocking Yucca Mountain or in restructuring the legislation to make it more favorable to Nevada."

First elected in 1958, Cannon chaired both the Rules Committee and the powerful Commerce Committee at times during his four terms in office. Former Democratic Sen. Richard Bryan said Cannon was poised to gain even more power by chairing the mighty Armed Services Committee after victory in 1982.

But his loss left Nevada with little ability to stop what was then a push to designate Yucca Mountain as the nation's nuclear waste dump. With the freshman Hecht and fellow Republican Sen. Paul Laxalt in office, Nevada couldn't muster significant opposition.

Joan Claybrook, president of Washington, D.C.-based Public Citizen, often lobbied Cannon during the 1970s and has no doubt he would have done everything possible to protect Nevada.

"Absolutely," Claybrook said. "He was a very potent legislator. He was tough as nails and he was pro-Nevada all the way."

Cannon was seventh in Senate seniority when he was beaten and had been on the main stage numerous times in his political career -- including casting the deciding vote to close a filibuster of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and presiding over the high-profile confirmation hearings of Vice President Nelson Rockefeller.

But weakened by a tough primary and a distant bribery scandal, Cannon couldn't overcome the support Hecht received from President Ronald Reagan.

As a result, Claybrook said, Nevada was left with inexperienced senators, which only added to the struggle a small Western state had fending off the rest of the country.

Cannon's years of service and chairmanships could have made the difference on Capitol Hill when the assault came over the next five years.

"He would have been a major player," Bryan added. "Clearly he would have been an enormous help to Nevada's effort."

Not surprisingly, Hecht doesn't agree. He never considered himself the underdog in 1982 and doesn't think revisionist history helps today's Yucca efforts.

"We're going back 20 years, and, quite frankly, that does a disservice to Sen. (Harry) Reid and Sen. Bryan," Hecht said referring to the current and former Democratic senator regarded as the state's most vocal Yucca opponents.

Hecht said there's little to learn from Cannon's loss two decades ago. In fact, he said, the lesson is today.

"The decisions are going to be made right now about Yucca Mountain," Hecht said.

Talk of Cannon's power and how he used it to benefit Nellis Air Force Base and other Nevada projects doesn't matter when it's the current Congress poised to decide the state's fate, Hecht said.

"Reid is the No. 2 man now," he said. "That's higher than chairman."

Hecht has a point: Why dwell on the past when Nevada now has a senator with the power and position to conceivably stop the Yucca Mountain project?

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