Saitta, Steel battle tradition in quest for high court

CARSON CITY - District Judges Nancy Saitta and Cynthia Steel, both of Clark County, will be bucking tradition when they take on incumbent Nevada Supreme Court Justices Nancy Becker and Michael Douglas in the November election.

Since the 1915 Legislature made the election of judges and Supreme Court justices nonpartisan, only three incumbents have been defeated in the 19 elections in which a challenger entered the race.

"It's tough to beat an incumbent," said state Archivist Guy Rocha, whose research shows that only six times in the last 142 years have incumbents on the Supreme Court been defeated.

"This is one of the safest positions to be an incumbent," he said.

Saitta, who said last week she would challenge Becker, intends to reveal her platform when she makes her formal announcement. Steel, who ran unsuccessfully two years ago, filed her candidacy Monday to challenge Douglas.

Douglas and Becker filed for re-election at 9 a.m. Wednesday.

The last incumbent Supreme Court justice to be defeated was Noel Manoukian in 1984, losing to Cliff Young, a former congressman and state senator. Of the more than 250,000 votes cast, Young won by 12,207.

Manoukian, now a senior District Court judge in Douglas County, recalled that the atmosphere of the five-member court was different then. There was open warfare among the justices.

Battles between Manoukian and Justices Al Gunderson and Charles Springer spilled over into the newspapers.

"I was the only one that would not knuckle under" to Gunderson and Springer, Manoukian said Monday.

Manoukian believes he was the victim of "yellow journalism" and said there were columns and editorials printed against him that didn't stick to the facts.

Young, a practicing attorney in Reno at the time of the 1984 election, said the controversy on the court played a part in his win.

"There was a lot of friction on the court and Noel seemed to be on one side and most of the others seemed to be opposing Noel," Young said. "There was bad blood between Noel and Al (Gunderson)."

He said he was a byproduct of that feud - Gunderson and Springer talked with him about running against Manoukian.

"They didn't think I was the greatest thing since John Marshall, but I was their last best hope," quipped Young, now a senior judge in Reno.

Young, who served three terms on the court before his retirement, said things seem to be going well on the Supreme Court now. The Supreme Court was highly criticized in 2003 for a decision over a legislative proposal to raise taxes. That controversy, though, quieted down after then-Chief Justice Deborah Agosti declined to run for re-election the next year.

Manoukian, who also works as an arbitrator and mediator, agrees that things are not the same this election as they were in 1984. Supreme Court justices are not fighting publicly among themselves. If there is dissension, it has yet to make it into public print.

Rocha said that in 1984 there was "lots of controversy" on the court and it apparently cost Manoukian his position.

Rocha said incumbent Supreme Court justices were unseated in 1874, 1880 and 1894 when the races were partisan.

After the elections were made nonpartisan in 1915, the first incumbent to be beaten was Pat McCarran, who later became one of Nevada's most powerful U.S. senators. E. A. Ducker defeated McCarran, who was in his first term, by 535 votes in 1918. Ducker won four more terms unopposed.

Rocha said "political intrigue" contributed to McCarran's defeat. Although McCarran was a Democrat, the party leaders didn't like him and persuaded Ducker to run against him. Although the race was nonpartisan, Democrats mounted a campaign against McCarran, who was viewed as a maverick in the party.

In 1950 incumbent Charles Horsey was defeated by Charles Merrill by 2,144 votes - 52 percent to 48 percent.

Rocha said a review of newspaper articles showed that age and geography played a part in the Horsey-Merrill contest.

The 70-year-old Horsey was from Las Vegas. Merrill, who was in his 40s, came from Washoe County, which at that time had a larger population than Clark County.

One newspaper in Reno urged voters to support Merrill because he was from Washoe County, which had not had a member on the then-three-member court since 1918. (Merrill outspent Horsey $833 to $678 in the election.)

Many times in the last 50 years, a sitting justice of the Supreme Court was never challenged.

This year Chief Justice Bob Rose, the senior member of the court, has decided to retire after three six-year terms. District Judge Michael Cherry of Clark County has filed to succeed Rose.

Douglas was appointed in 2004 to succeed the late Myron Leavitt. Douglas successfully ran for the two-year unexpired term in the 2004 election, defeating Joel Hansen 50 percent to 27 percent. Now Douglas must compete for a full term.

Becker, a former District Court judge in Clark County, ran for the Supreme Court in 1998 for an open seat when the court was expanded from five to seven members. She won a two-year term. Becker, then an incumbent, won a full six-year term in 2000, defeating Gary Backus 312,678 to 126,611.

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