Tuesday, August 05, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

COLUMN: Steve Sebelius

The game's afoot

However long or short Las Vegas Councilwoman Janet Moncrief's tenure may be, when the history of Las Vegas politics is written, she will undoubtedly be known as the elected official who never got a honeymoon.

Whether by her own actions or an accident arising from the murky waters of Ward 1 politics, Moncrief's nascent term has been tainted from the very first hour of the very first day, something that hasn't happened to anyone else on the council, including the man she replaced, former Councilman Michael McDonald.

And on Monday, things got worse: Secretary of State Dean Heller made a formal request for the Nevada Division of Investigations to look into allegations that Moncrief broke campaign finance laws in her bitter, hard-fought race against McDonald. (Moncrief, you'll recall, won that matchup, 58 percent to 42 percent.)

But McDonald, now freed from the chains of public office, can smile at last, while his replacement is fighting off allegations from city gadflies that she used the gadflies to beat McDonald because of -- oh, sweet irony! -- a lack of ethics.

Which is not to say that anyone should jump to conclusions. Moncrief is obviously a political amateur, having moved into the city and Ward 1 just in time to file to run against McDonald, voting for the very first time. But that doesn't mean she's broken any laws.

And let's not forget that her primary accusers -- former Councilman Steve Miller and former candidate Peter Christoff -- initially lied when asked about their respective involvements in her campaign, only to turn around shortly before her inauguration and confess to assisting in a conspiracy to help her get elected.

"It's conflicting evidence. You've got two different people writing two different letters," says Heller's spokesman Steve George, explaining why the matter was sent to the investigations division.

Moncrief refused to be interviewed Monday, instead sending out a one-paragraph statement on her official city letterhead. "I intend to fully cooperate with that office during this process," Moncrief says in the statement, which is good, since she really has no choice about whether to cooperate or not.

"From the start, I have said that I am not aware of any illegal activity involving my campaign," the statement continues. "However, because an investigation is now underway, I will decline all comment in the media about this issue until the work of the Secretary of State's office is completed."

Moncrief, it should be noted, didn't have a problem with commenting after allegations against her were officially lodged during her campaign, but as she's not been proven a deft navigator of these political shoals, perhaps silence is golden.

"Finally, in this country there is supposed to be a presumption of innocence until proven otherwise. It is my sincere hope that members of the media will try to adhere to that practice until the investigation is over," the statement concludes. Already did that, councilwoman. (See above.)

But the flip side of the presumption of innocence is the possibility that, perhaps, Miller and Christoff are telling the truth, and that they really did engage in a conspiracy with Moncrief to break the law. That Christoff really did allow Moncrief to use his name on her fliers, and that he really did hand carry the material from the printer to the post office and pay for mailings with cash supplied by Moncrief's campaign. Or that Miller really did help to create a flier that purported to come from McDonald's campaign and was designed to erode the former councilman's union support, and that he really did advise the politically naive Moncrief about city issues and public appearances.

It's also possible that Miller and Christoff were offended when, after winning election, Moncrief hired mayoral campaigner and fund-raiser Tom Letizia -- whom they see as one of the enemy -- to help retire her debt. Thus betrayed, they decided to let the truth emerge at last, or so their story goes.

These are matters the Nevada Division of Investigations must probe. But regardless of the outcome of those proceedings, which will not come for several weeks, if not longer, it cannot be denied that Moncrief has been politically damaged from the literal start of her term of public service.

And the bizarre incident earlier this month, in which she was followed from a downtown bar to a dinner meeting at Fellini's Restaurant on West Charleston Boulevard by a Metro Police dispatcher, who called patrol officers to report Moncrief was allegedly driving drunk, certainly doesn't help. (Moncrief passed a field sobriety test and was not charged in that incident.)

McDonald, near the closing days of his term, could not escape, even for a short time, the relentless drumbeat of negative publicity. It seems the same is happening to Moncrief, only at the beginning of her tenure.

Could it be that Ward 1 itself is cursed?

Steve Sebelius is a Review-Journal political columnist. His column runs Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at 383-0283 or by e-mail at ssebelius@reviewjournal.com.