Friday, November 07, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

THE PLAYERS: Dario Herrera

Three years ago, Democrats pinned their party's hopes to regain power in Nevada's political arena on 27-year-old Dario Herrera.

He was bigger than his title of Clark County Commission chairman. Herrera was playing golf with President Clinton, hosting campaign receptions for first lady Hillary Clinton and speaking at the Democratic National Convention.

During a stop in Las Vegas, former Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros summed up how he envisioned Herrera's future in politics.

"You are a star, and you're going places," Cisneros said.

Herrera was raised in Miami by his mother; his father left the family when Herrera was 2. In 1991, he moved to Las Vegas to attend UNLV and abandoned his college football aspirations in favor of politics.

In 1994, Herrera was a campaign coordinator for Gov. Bob Miller. In 1996, he was elected to the Nevada Assembly. And in 1998, he captured a seat on the Clark County Commission.

Toward the end of Herrera's four-year term on the commission, he decided to run for Congress. But ethical lapses caught up with him and his political dreams were decimated by Election Day.

Herrera's downward spiral was triggered by media reports about a lucrative contract he received from the Las Vegas Housing Authority.

He was paid $50,000 by the Housing Authority to do public relations work that the authority board members never knew about. Federal investigators who reviewed the contract found no evidence of Herrera's work.

He also infuriated constituents and prompted an ethics complaint when he voted in favor of a controversial billboard ordinance. Critics argued that the new ordinance benefited Herrera's wife, who was a consultant for the billboard industry.