Friday, Feb. 11, 2022 | 2 a.m.
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If you’ve missed any of the “debates” so far between the Nevada Republicans running for governor in 2022, let us summarize them for you.
Critical race theory bad, rampant voter fraud bad, sanctuary cities bad, liberals coming to get your guns bad, pandemic safety precautions bad, Steve Sisolak bad, Donald Trump good. Very, very good. Like, the goodest.
We’ll admit that’s not a thorough recap, but the Republicans’ events have not been debates, either. They’ve mostly been contests to see who can talk tougher than the others on issues manufactured by the extreme right to fire up GOP voters.
What we’ve heard from these candidates so far is little more than they offer in their TV commercials and campaign websites. I’ll ban CRT. I’ll ban sanctuary cities. I’ll ban abortion. I’ll stop voter fraud.
There are a few problems with these promises. For one, they address phantom issues in some cases, like CRT (not taught in Nevada schools) and voter fraud (not happening at a scale that would come close to affecting outcomes of elections ,unless you count the fraudulent claims from the GOP candidates that are a pretext to actually commit voter fraud and disenfranchise honest voters).
In most cases, the candidates also wouldn’t have unilateral power to address their issues as governor — there’s a Legislature involved in the process, and it’s likely to remain under Democratic control for a while.
But the biggest problem with the blather coming from so-called debates is that it offers nothing about how the candidates would address the real issues being faced by Nevadans.
What’s their plan to improve educational achievement across the board? How would they address climate change and its effects on Nevada, such as increasingly intense drought and wildfires? What’s their strategy to diversify Nevada’s economy and reduce our reliance on tourism and gaming? How would they improve transportation? What would they do to ensure Nevadans had access to high-quality health care and affordable health insurance coverage? What would they do to protect Nevadans from COVID-19?
Thursday’s debate offered practically nothing of substance to answer any of these questions.
Instead, you had moments like these:
• Michele Fiore responding to a question about emissions-reductions goals by saying Nevada has the resources to be completely energy independent — including, apparently, the ability to produce enough fuel to “keep driving your big damn trucks” like her diesel-powered Ford F-250 pickup. But in a state with virtually no oil reserves and no refinery capacity, it’s difficult to see how that can happen. Maybe magic? Or did Fiore just come out advocating electric vehicles and solar power vs. fossil fuel?
• Former Sen. Dean Heller saying he would make carrying a concealed firearm without a permit legal in Nevada. Not without the Legislature, he wouldn’t, and Heller hasn’t indicated how he would work with lawmakers who in recent years have passed several gun-safety measures. This is just what the Strip needs, a whole lot of people packing while drinking and gambling.
• Joey Gilbert saying rural Nevadans want to be left alone, and he would support them. Does that include not getting any tax revenue from Las Vegas and Reno? And if so, how would those rural areas fund their schools, roads, police departments, etc.? Rural Nevadans would not only be lonely, but much poorer if Gilbert got his way.
Even when the candidates got into a real issue — water policy — they offered little of substantive value. Heller, for instance, said he would solve the problem by negotiating for Nevada to get a bigger allotment of water from the Colorado River. Not only would that be a bruising fight with the other states that receive water from the river, but it doesn’t address the root cause of the West’s dwindling water supply. That would be climate change, which has drastically decreased inflow to the Colorado.
It went on like this, with the candidates answering policy-related questions in bits and pieces, if at all, and instead trying to out-Trump each other.
But at least they were there, unlike Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo, who’s also seeking the GOP nomination for governor. He hasn’t participated in any of the three debates so far, and his camp says he won’t do so until closer to the candidate filing deadline in March.
Lombardo also has ducked questions from the media, revealing himself as a snowflake hiding from anyone who isn’t guaranteed to approve of him.
It’s past time for Lombardo to come out of hiding, and for him and the other candidates to start answering questions in detail about how they’ll make Nevada a better place.
