A secret of how Elizabeth Halseth won her state Senate seat — Democrats

By David McGrath Schwartz

Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2012 | 2 a.m.

Former state Sen. Elizabeth Halseth’s brief career in Nevada politics can be attributed to several things — a vulnerable Republican incumbent, the Tea Party surge.

The most remarkable, though, is that a group with ties to Democratic interests helped Halseth get elected.

The Nevada Republic Alliance, a political action committee funded by labor and headed by a Democratic assemblyman, sent scathing mail pieces to district voters attacking incumbent state Sen. Dennis Nolan during the GOP primary.

The connections between Democratic groups and Halseth’s victory have not been previously reported.

Nolan was a moderate who in 2009 had backed tax increases and was a swing vote on domestic partnership legislation that same year. Halseth, meanwhile, was running against him as a more conservative Republican alternative, touting her strong family values and criticizing Nolan for his defense of a friend in a rape case.

The thinking on the part of the Democratic allies was this: Their candidate for the seat, businessman Benny Yerushalmi, was better positioned to beat Halseth, who was 27 at the time and a recent transplant, than Nolan, who had represented the district for 16 years as an assemblyman and then senator.

As Democrats hoped, Halseth would win the primary. She would, however, foil their plans by downing Yerushalmi in the November election. She was directly supported in the primary by conservative business groups and donors such as the anti-tax Keystone Corp. and businessman Monte Miller.

Halseth, who was named “Conservative of the Year” by the political action group Citizens Outreach, resigned last week, citing a turbulent divorce and trouble finding a job.

Democrats now believe it’s a seat they can win. But it was Democrats’ success helping Halseth with the primary that eliminated a moderate voice in the state Senate’s Republican caucus.

Assemblyman Skip Daly, D-Sparks, the resident agent for the Nevada Republic Alliance, acknowledged the strategy.

“We thought it (attacking Nolan) would help Benny,” he said. “Apparently that was wrong. Hindsight is 20/20.”

Campaign finance records show that a Democratic direct mail firm in Washington, D.C., Gumbinner and Davies Communication, was paid $17,000 by the alliance shortly after the primary election.

Nolan, in an interview, said one of the fliers attacked him for being a “tax and spend Republican.”

This, in retrospect, is particularly ironic.

During the 2011 session, Senate Republicans stood with Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval on his promise not to raise taxes, even as Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford, D-Las Vegas, made impassioned pleas to the GOP members not to let “politics and ideology continue to hinder an open dialogue.”

Such a plea would have certainly resonated more with Nolan than Halseth.

Nolan said he was shocked by the fliers sent to voters by Democrats’ allies. (A spokesman for the party said the party did not spend any money on mail during the campaign.)

But Nolan said the name itself — Nevada Republic Alliance — was, in his view, intended to fool voters into thinking it was a Republican group participating in the Republican primary.

Daly, the resident agent for the group, said he wasn’t sure how the group, first formed in 2002, got its name.

“You have to pick a name for the organization because you have to have one,” he said. “I don’t believe that was the reason.”

The group lists three committee members heading the group. One of them, Andrew Barbano, a longtime labor and political activist and editor of nevadalabor.com, deferred questions about the mailers to Daly.

“I was 99 percent in the dark,” he said.

But, he noted, it wouldn’t be the first time labor backed a Republican for strategic reasons. Labor unions were part of a coalition formed after the 2003 Legislature to defeat state Sen. Ann O’Connell, another conservative Republican.

Joined with gaming and other interests, O’Connell was defeated.

The victor in that race? A Republican doctor named Joe Heck, who is now in Congress.