Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Boulder City mayor sworn in by son, a judge: ‘It was a sweet moment’

joe hardy

Courtesy

Boulder City Mayor Joe Hardy Sr., left, is sworn into his of office by his son, Judge Joe Hardy Jr., on Tuesday before a meeting of the city council.

New Boulder City Mayor Joe Hardy was eager to get to business at the Tuesday night City Council meeting, his first as the city’s top elected official.

But before he could officially rap the gavel, he needed his son to perform a unique honor. Joe Hardy Jr., a judge in Clark County District Court, needed to swear him in.

“I’m going to step down, and my son the judge — yes, I’m proud of him — will administer the oath of office,” Hardy Sr. told the full room.

In front of the dais and city seal, Mayor Hardy solemnly promised to uphold the U.S. and Nevada constitutions and serve the people of the small city at the heart of Lake Mead and Hoover Dam. Then Judge Hardy — the family calls him Joe Paul, using his first and middle names — wrapped him in a hug, his black judge’s robe sweeping in for the embrace.

“It was a sweet moment to have my son, a judge, swear me in as mayor,” Mayor Hardy said later in an interview.

He also called it tender. So did Hardy Jr., whom Hardy Sr. said wasn’t going to get his same name but looked so much like him at birth, and still does, that he immediately did.

Hardy Jr., the eldest of eight children, said he has given oaths of office for societies, like a bar association and a chamber of commerce. This was “very much an honor and a privilege for a son to be able to do that with his father,” he said.

The two Joe Hardys are close.

Hardy Sr. speaks warmly of how his son was an ideal role model for his siblings, and fondly of how son used to think he could beat dad at basketball — now, sure, because Hardy Sr. is old enough to be beaten, he said.

The elder Joe Hardy can go by, or has earned, the titles of doctor; bishop and president in his church; Nevada assemblyman and state senator; Boulder City councilman, a post he held from 1999 to 2002; mayor and dean — he’s about to retire as associate dean of clinical education at Touro University Nevada’s College of Osteopathic Medicine in Henderson.

People ask what to call him, “and I say, Joe,” the mayor said.

He wants to be accessible, and as an active member of the community since moving to Boulder City in 1982, he has been. He came here after serving in the U.S. Air Force and then pondering where in the West to land with his growing family.

Mayor Hardy, as Dr. Hardy, was a family medicine physician before going into medical education administration. He delivered babies at Boulder City Hospital and the St. Rose Dominican Hospitals on Boulder Highway. One of his pediatric patients now works at City Hall.

New colleagues and councilmembers Steve Walton and Cokie Booth were also sworn in Tuesday — by the city clerk, as is typical — joining sitting members Matt Fox and Sherri Jorgensen on the five-person council.