Nevada AG Candidate Meets With Local Voters

By VERNON ROBISON

Moapa Valley Progress

For Nevada Attorney General candidate Wes Duncan, the seed for public service was planted back in 2008-09 while he was on active military duty in Iraq.

It was at the height of “the surge” and Duncan was serving as Judge Advocate General (JAG) in the US Air Force. It was his job to help prosecute terrorists in the war-torn country. It was a huge task. There were 13,000 detainees in southern Iraq who needed to be prosecuted in a military court.

“That was really a formative experience for me,” Duncan told a group of about two dozen Moapa Valley resident gathered at the Old Logandale School on Tuesday, March 20 for an informal Meet and Greet event. “I actually saw just what it looks like in a society when the rule of law is gone; all safety and security are gone with it. It was alarming.”

He said that the experience left him wanting to come back home to Nevada and work to make his home state the safest place to raise a family. And he had good reason. Duncan and his wife have a young family with two children ages 4 and 3, with another one on the way.

Duncan wasn’t home long before he was making good on his commitment.
In 2012 he ran for the State Assembly against a 10 year incumbent. He hit the campaign trail with all his might, personally knocking on more than 20,000 doors and making face-to-face connections with voters. He was elected in a narrow upset victory.

After his first session in the legislature, having been voted freshman legislator of the year by the Las Vegas Review Journal, he joined the Clark County District Attorney’s office as a prosecutor.

In 2014, Duncan was re-elected to his Assembly seat with over 61 percent of the vote.
Then came the call. Nevada

Attorney General Adam Laxalt was on the other end of the line. He asked Duncan to serve as the First Assistant Attorney General, the top spot under Laxalt himself.
“That call kind of hit me out of the blue,” Duncan said. “That year had been a pretty tough year for our family, so my wife and I took some time thinking about it. We finally decided that it was the right thing and we jumped in.”

It wasn’t long before Duncan had learned the ins and outs of the Attorney General’s office. He began facing his assignments head on. He was instrumental in crafting policies to eradicate a state backlog of more than 8,000 rape kits. He also worked to develop specific policies to combat drug addiction.

Toward the end of last year, with Laxalt announcing his intention to make a run for governor, Duncan decided he would run for the Attorney General spot. He resigned his position in September and joined a private law firm in Las Vegas as he prepared to run.

Now on the campaign trail, Duncan said he is keeping his original goal of making Nevada safe. He has divided that into three areas of focus that he feels could use his attention in the office.

The first is the area of mental health. Duncan believes that the state needs more mental health crisis centers or, as he calls them, psychiatric ERs. “Right now when police pick up someone who is mentally ill, there aren’t a lot of options,” Duncan said. “They can take them to the regular ER, but that isn’t really the right care and it doesn’t work. Or in extreme cases, they just take them to jail which ends up degrading their health even more.”

Duncan said that as he has spoken to sheriffs across the state this is one of the top issues on their mind. “They want more dedicated funding for mental health care,” he said.

The second focus area for Duncan is on reducing domestic violence cases in the state. Duncan cited that Nevada is the third worse state in the country for men killing women. “That is something that needs to be worked on,” he said. “It really touches all parts of the state.”

Thirdly, Duncan is committed to a more proactive criminal justice system. He wants to work closely with law enforcement in addressing hopelessness among certain segments of the population. This could include after school programs and other youth outreach programs. “We need to focus on areas where we can get down to the root cause of crime in our community, before it develops in our youth,” Duncan said.

Toward the end of the Meet and Greet event Duncan answered questions from the group about key issues which concerned them.

One of the recurring themes dealt with the ongoing struggle with getting the Clark County School District into compliance with the laws requiring a reorganization of the district.
“One of the things that are key to us is that when laws are passed, they are enforced,” said Logandale resident Larry Moses. “The CCSD has routinely ignored the law, whether it deals with the reorganization or a number of other things.”

Duncan agreed that the Attorney General’s office should continue to watch over the CCSD reorganization process and see that the law is being followed.

Other’s in attendance brought up questions about the CCSD trustees recently ignoring open meeting law requirements in meetings regarding gender diversity policy. Duncan said that his administration would continue to be tough on adherance to the open meeting law.

Moapa Valley Water District General Manager Joe Davis recounted ongoing difficulties that the district has experienced with the BLM over the process of obtaining rights of way for infrastructure. He asked if the Attorney General could be a point of contact for the district to take matters to the governor and represent them against the federal agency.

Duncan responded that there are often instances when the state will intervene to protect the interest of the state against the federal government. This can often occur with land issues and water issues. He gave the instance of the work that the Attorney General did in the case of the Sage Grouse in northern and central Nevada.

“Nevada had come up with a good plan to protect the bird all while seeing to the interests of agriculture and ranching and other interests in the state,” Duncan said. “Then the BLM came down with its own plan that would have disrupted all of that. So the state had to file suit. The Attorney General can definitely step in and try to get the BLM to back away from certain issues.”

Another concern raised by the local group was that of school safety. Duncan emphasized that this was a major role for the Attorney General. He cited the tragic shooting in Parkland, Florida where there was an apparent breakdown in local, state and federal law enforcement in deeming the shooter as a threat early on.

“I think that we have to keep open collaboration with the different levels of law enforcement: federal, state and local; and come up with more proactive solutions,” Duncan said.

He said that local stakeholders needed to be brought together to discuss what is the answer for their school facilities – specifically in how to harden the facilities. In addition, discussions needed to take place at the legislature on devoting resources to implementing those plans.

“We need to engage with local police on how we can have these facilities protected by people who are adequately trained; people who can react and put down a threat,” Duncan said.

This approach would have to go hand in hand with the focus on mental health services that had been mentioned before, he said.

Logandale resident Lindsey Dalley, who had arranged the Meet and Greet, said that he had met Duncan through discussions about the CCSD reorganization process. Dalley said that he had been impressed by the candidate.
“He felt like he had a lot in common with our community,” Dalley said. “He is a family man with strong values. He is not an activist – he doesn’t have an activist political agenda – and I think that is important in a position like the Attorney General. He just shares a lot of cultural values with us that I think we can preserve.”