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David Smallwood brings in notebooks Tuesday containing recall petitions against Las Vegas City Councilman Michael McDonald. Former council member Steve Miller looks on. Photo by Jim Laurie.

Wednesday, December 13, 2000
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

RECALL EFFORT: McDonald foes turn in signatures

About 300 more names than required submitted to city clerk

The effort to recall Las Vegas City Councilman Michael McDonald from his Ward 1 seat won't be decided by dimpled or hanging chad -- nor will the final outcome be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. But like the presidential race in Florida, it will be close.

With five minutes to spare before a 5 p.m. Tuesday deadline, recall organizers submitted an estimated 3,300 signatures to the city clerk's office, about 300 more than the 2,995 required to force a special election.

But the matter is far from decided; the signatures must be verified by Clark County Registrar of Voters Larry Lomax, who must ensure that all of the signatures come from registered voters who live in McDonald's ward.

The petition must then be reviewed by Secretary of State Dean Heller's office. Lomax will have four days to verify the signatures, starting this morning when the petitions are driven from City Hall to the Clark County Government Center.

David Smallwood, an unemployed real estate salesman who volunteered on the recall effort, delivered the petitions to the clerk as a pack of reporters and cameras awaited the deadline.

"Ladies and gentlemen, these are the recall petitions for City Councilman Michael J. McDonald," he said. Then Smallwood, who said his real estate license was revoked for failure to pay child support, escalated the rhetoric in the campaign against McDonald to levels that would make the most partisan Florida voter blush.

"Michael McDonald is, in my opinion, the political version of Ted Bundy," Smallwood said, comparing the councilman to the former law student who killed as many as 35 women, including several coeds at Florida State University. "He's a nice guy ... but the evil that he does behind the scenes has got to stop."

A city of Las Vegas ethics panel found McDonald guilty in November on two misdemeanor counts of having a conflict of interest and giving special treatment to a friend. A lawyer for the ethics panel will recommend next week whether to prosecute those charges in Municipal Court.

Similar charges are pending before a state ethics panel, involving McDonald's involvement in a controversial liquor-license application and the proposed sale of a financially ailing recreational center in which his boss is a minor investor.

The ethics charges, and subsequent recall effort, were filed by supporters of former Councilman Steve Miller, a longtime McDonald critic who has lost two elections to the councilman.

Asked whether it was fair to compare McDonald's ethics violations to the murders of many women, Smallwood reconsidered.

"That's not a fair analogy," he said. "Sometimes you live next door to someone ... and you find out they're John Wayne Gacy," he added, thus likening McDonald to the Chicago-area "killer clown" who murdered 33 young boys and buried most of them in his basement.

Smallwood said he is prepared to lead a second recall effort against McDonald if the one that concluded Tuesday proves unsuccessful. "There'll be a new team," he said, one that would not include Miller.

Then, Smallwood criticized the "climate of fear" generated by allegations that McDonald and his top aide, Rick Henry, carried concealed weapons on the 10th floor of City Hall.

McDonald, a former Las Vegas police officer, admits to carrying guns at City Hall while serving on the force but said he has not done so in several months.

McDonald said he did not know Smallwood but was not pleased to learn of being compared to two of the most notorious serial killers of the 20th century.

"I think it almost talks of the character of everyone involved in this recall," he said. "I don't know this gentleman (Smallwood). But Steve Miller referred to this as his hobby: He enjoys doing this to people. That's sick."

If a recall election is held -- which would likely take place in February -- McDonald said he is prepared to wage a campaign to keep his seat.

"What we'll have to do is wait and see what comes," he said. "These are uncharted waters. If we have to mount another campaign, we're up to it, and my consultants are up to it."

Miller, who a week ago said he was about 1,000 signatures short of the number required for recall, attributed a late surge in signatures to the media attention generated by his efforts.

Acknowledging that the process has been much tougher than he had expected, Miller praised his longtime foe for the support he has among voters in his ward.

"He is quite popular in Ward 1, and he deserves to be," Miller said. "But we're not here to talk about street-level politics. We're talking about ethics in government."

Miller said he would drop his campaign against McDonald if the councilman "admits to having learned from his mistakes (instead of) blaming them on the ethics committee or on me."

"You have to grow up sometime."

He said he expected the recall effort to gain far more than the required number of signatures and was disappointed with the narrow margin. "I didn't want to just squeak over the top," he said. "It was interesting to be able to do it, but that was not what I had in mind at all."

Among the last to sign the petition was Mayor Oscar Goodman, who signed at 3:30 p.m. after weeks of back-and-forth on whether to support the recall effort. Perhaps wary of lending the weight of his mayoralty to the effort, Goodman's signature bore the following written caveat: "As a constituent, and in my individual capacity."