Sunday, Nov. 6, 2022 | 2 a.m.
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As a retired Reno newsman who covered Paul Laxalt during the height of his power as a U.S. senator in the 1980s, I would like to share some observations relevant to the Senate race between his grandson Adam Laxalt and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev.
Paul Laxalt, a confidante of President Ronald Reagan, was a conservative Republican who counted Democrats among his friends and worked both sides of the aisle to forge legislation in Congress. He was a pragmatist who focused on dealing with the country’s problems while at the same time boosting the GOP’s prospects.
His campaign signs featured the slogan “One of Us.” The son of a Basque shepherd, he was born and raised in Carson City and exposed to people of all political stripes at his mother’s boarding house. He attended public schools and developed a relationship with Reagan when they were governors of neighboring states in the late 1960s. He also served as lieutenant governor and governor.
Adam Laxalt was raised in Alexandria, Va., and attended a private college preparatory school there. He began living full time in Nevada in 2011 and was elected to a term as state attorney general in 2014. He’s ultra-conservative compared with his grandfather.
Among other actions, he joined his Republican counterparts in other states by signing Nevada onto lawsuits supporting abortion restrictions and by opposing a multistate investigation into ExxonMobile’s alleged role in downplaying climate change.
Paul Laxalt was no fan of corporations. He enjoyed a reputation for being able to disagree without being disagreeable. Though they disagreed on many policy issues, Democrat Harry Reid viewed him as a man of utmost integrity in the Senate. “If Ronald Reagan needed honest advice, he went to Paul,” Reid told The New York Times.
Conversely, Adam Laxalt is one of the earliest and strongest supporters of the big lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump. As co-chair of Trump’s Nevada campaign, he led efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in the state with groundless lawsuits and phony claims of voter fraud debunked by Nevada’s top election official, a fellow Republican. He thinks those who participated in the Jan. 6 riots are patriots.
The lies of Adam Laxalt and Trump have fueled an attack on democracy and rising fears of political violence. They should not be rewarded with one of Nevada’s Senate seats, but they may win if Democrats are no-shows in the election like they were for the 2014 mid-terms, when Laxalt narrowly captured the attorney general’s race.
Adam Laxalt says he supports Christian values, but it’s time for him to read what the Bible says matters most to God: love, character and honesty. He should consider the seven “things” in Proverbs 6: 16-19 that God finds “detestable”: “haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a man who stirs up dissension among brothers.”
The passage offers wise guidance to voters in Nevada’s Senate race.
Martin Griffith was a political and legislative reporter for the Reno Gazette-Journal from 1979 to 1984 and the Associated Press in Reno from 1985 to 2015.
