Monday, Oct. 25, 2004 | 11:04 a.m.
In the latest salvo fired in the hotly contested race for County Commission B, Shari Buck has brought in a big gun -- Sandy Heverly, who has long served as the conscience of Las Vegas on drunken driving.
In a 30-second television spot that began running last week, Heverly, who has locked horns at the state Legislature with Buck's opponent, Assemblyman Tom Collins, paints a picture of a lawmaker who has a pattern of voting against measures that would discourage drunken drivers.
Democrat Collins, 54, calls the ad "over-the-top" and says it is yet another attempt by his opponent to draw voters' attention away from the issues of the campaign to a matter "that has nothing to do" with the current race.
Republican Buck, a 44-year-old North Las Vegas city councilwoman, says a candidate's voting record in another office "has everything to do with the race."
"When statistics show that lower (blood alcohol) rates reduced accidents and he repeatedly voted against bills that would lower the legal limit, that is something the voters need to know about."
Heverly says she did not do the commercial simply to get back at a lawmaker who was perceived as standing in the way of her agenda.
"My personal opinion is that Shari Buck is a worthy person for the job," said Heverly, a resident of County Commission District A. "But also, Tom Collins has a pattern of voting against tougher DUI laws. It concerns me, given his record, how he might vote on county liquor issues and ordinances."
Heverly, formerly of Mothers Against Drunk Driving and currently the longtime driving force behind Stop DUI, said she did the commercial as a private citizen and not as a member of any anti-DUI organization. She said Stop DUI could lose its tax-exempt status if it were to support a candidate.
Twelve years ago Collins, while a North Las Vegas planning commissioner, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor reckless driving -- plea bargained down from felony drunken driving charges -- and as an assemblyman voted against bills to reduce the legal blood alcohol limit to 0.08. It eventually became law.
Heverly did not mention Collins' conviction in her ad, just his voting record.
Buck, in addition to the Heverly commercial, released last week a flier entitled, "Tom Collis has some problems he doesn't want you to know about."
The flier said that in the 1992 incident, three people were injured and Collins was sentenced to attending driving school.
Collins, who was first elected to the Assembly in 1992, argues that if he were pro-drunken driving, as his opponent paints him, he would not have received endorsements of police and family-issue oriented agencies that traditionally are tough on crime.
"I am endorsed by every law enforcement agency as well as education and family groups, and my record is clear that I stand up for stricter penalties that keep criminals in prison longer," he said.
"The (Heverly) ad is over the top and desperate. It is a non-issue they are trying to use to tie me to my history, which has been discussed and written about at length. And I have responded to misrepresentations by the Buck campaign about it."
Collins says he plans to issue a new mailer this week and his own TV commercial "addressing her (Buck's) public record."
Collins has done his share of attacking Buck's record, telling voters that she supported strip clubs in North Las Vegas. Collins sent a flier out charging that Buck supported "the only all-nude bar and strip club" in Southern Nevada.
Buck has said that her 2001 vote was not to allow the all-nude Palomino Club, which has full liquor service, to operate but to transfer ownership. And that was done, she said, on the advice of the city attorney who told council members they had no grounds to deny the license transfer.
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