EDITORIAL: Please Don’t Forget The Rurals In The Assembly Appointment!

Though the election happened nearly a month ago, there are still loose ends out there. For local voters, that includes the filling of Dennis Hof’s notorious Assembly District 36 seat. Hof died on October 16 at the height of the campaign. By law, it was too late to remove his name from the ballot. Nevertheless, Hof went on to decisively win in the conservative district. That leaves a vacancy to be filled by a Republican chosen by the three County Commissions making up the district. Commission meetings on this matter are expected to begin next week.

As sprawling and diverse as District 36 is, finding an appointee to represent all various interests will be difficult. With Nye County at rougly 64 percent of the district’s population, it is expected and appropriate that its county commission carry the greater weight in the decision. But the smaller communities in Clark and Lincoln counties should not be ignored. Their needs and wishes are also an important factor. Balancing all of that will be the challenge.

With that potential conflict in mind, we here offer three points for the Commissioners to consider in their decision. We see these points as key to including the rural areas in the discussion.

1. Don’t get caught in the tyranny of the majority.
The founding fathers of the Constitution warned about the possibility of activist majority factions running roughshod over the rights of the minority. This problem has already raised its head in District 36.

Indeed it is this very syndrome that brought us Candidate Dennis Hof in the first place. Hof arose from a large faction of hard-line, “never tax” extremists in Pahrump who became enraged at incumbent James Oscarson over one issue only: the Commerce tax. Because of that one thing these folks unilaterally determined that Oscarson must go. No other accomplishment important to Pahrump or anyone else mattered. It was simply decided that “anything” would be better. And “anything” even included a candidate as deeply flawed as Dennis Hof.

Unfortunately, there was an unbridgeable void between the lifestyle of Mr. Hof and that of the regular folks in the rural areas. To Hof, the rurals were a utterly foreign country. He didn’t know the issues and didn’t comprehend the needs. What’s more, rural folks would never have been very comfortable approaching Hof to educate him on those issues and needs. In short, this election put the rurals in a very tough spot. Short of the bizarre turn of events that happened last month, this election would have resulted in the virtual loss of any effective representation for the rural areas of District 36.

Of course, all of these intricate details were completely overlooked by the Nye County Republican Party in its zealous runup to this election. They had no qualms whatsoever in pulling the rug out from under the rurals and leaving them essentially without representation. They had their one-issue in mind and nothing else mattered.

Fortunately, now there is a chance for a ‘do-over.’ The Commissioners should now take a moment to realize, and understand, the impossible position that our rural communities nearly faced with this election due to a thoughtless tyranny of the majority. Hopefully their upcoming decision will address and remedy it.

2. Recognize the new reality at the State Legislature.
There is no longer any balance of power in Carson City. The Democrats have swept the State Legislature, nearly gaining a veto-proof supermajority. The old methods of resistance are no longer going to work. A single outlying Assemblyman, whose sole focus is on stopping anything that looks like a tax increase, will be viewed as both foolish and backward given the current landscape. Thus sending a Hof surrogate to Carson City, at this point, would be equivalent to marginalizing and neutralizing all of District 36; including Pahrump!

What District 36 needs now is someone who will work with the other side of the aisle. It won’t do for our representative to be dismissed and relegated to a corner of the Assembly chamber where no one bothers to work with him. We need someone who can negotiate and communicate with the majority to try and get things done for us.

3. Choose someone equally at home throughout the district
With most of the District 36 population being in Pahrump, it makes sense that whoever is chosen should reside there and understand its needs best. But the appointee should also feel somewhat at home in the outlying rural areas of the district as well.

Let’s face it, before running for Assembly, Dennis Hof wouldn’t have been able to find his way to Logandale if he was given both a map and a flashlight. The same could be said of his Pahrump GOP surrogates.

There has to be a middle ground in this appointment. Is there anyone in Pahrump who also has some rural connections and sensibilities? Is there someone there who has some ties to rural northeastern Clark County? Is there someone who can navigate as well among the wilds of far-flung Lincoln county as he can in Pahrump? That is what is needed.

Most of all, we need someone who is accessible; someone we can feel comfortable in picking up the phone and calling, even with small rural issues. And we need someone from whom those calls will always get a quick and friendly response.

That kind of small-town familar relationship is what we have long been used to from our state legislators. And no matter what the difference in population between Moapa Valley and Pahrump, that is what we still have a right to in this appointment.