Sunday, February 15, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Dan Burdish sits in gray area on some issues but is unrelenting in opposing governmental growth

Dan Burdish, an anti-tax activist and co-owner of The Car Doctor, spends a lot of time on the Internet researching government growth. Burdish says he considers himself a libertarian-conservative-Republican. Photo by John Gurzinski.

Dan Burdish is difficult to label, a former executive director of the Nevada Republican Party, he opposes most tax increases and the growing government bureaucracy they finance.

But he's also a gay man who has been in the same relationship for 30 years, leaving him with a deep disdain of the religious right and its anti-homosexual agenda. Burdish calls himself a libertarian-conservative-Republican, a multihyphenated creation that speaks to his anti-tax leanings and his dislike for the intrusive social policies of the Christian Coalition.

"I believe they have done a disservice to the country as well as their religion," Burdish says. "They believe or profess to believe that God cares whether a Republican or Democrat is elected. It is my belief that God cares about how you treat your fellow man, not any label you might have after your name."

He has little regard for federal civil rights laws, believing that government cannot force people to accept racial equality. He is pro-choice but anti-abortion, arguing that women should have control of their bodies, though he believes abortions are wrong.

Any of his stances could be misconstrued, particularly in the black-and-white world of political debate. His most nuanced arguments leave him saying he would not make a good political candidate, but he has toyed with running against Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins, D-Henderson, a key proponent of last year's statewide tax increase.

The self-described bomb thrower loves writing letters to the editor, shooting e-mails to legislative leaders and threatening to file ballot measures to reverse legislative actions, which creates a typically unsuccessful formula for political office-seekers.

Depending upon the person doing the talking, Burdish is either a well-intentioned opponent of government waste or an overly zealous right-wing ideologue. His name routinely appears in news stories about governmental growth, where he fills the slot of the anti-tax activist.

His Nevadans for Tax Restraint is a one-man political action committee with a mailing list of 1,000 names. Bur- dish has threatened for months to push a voter referendum that would reverse the $833 million tax increase adopted by the Nevada Legislature. That effort remains on hold.

Burdish believes small government is a virtue, one endorsed by the nation's founders. He hears talk of mental patients going without care, seniors missing meals to pay for prescription drugs, and he's convinced that government should play a minimal role.

"Why are we doing this? Is it mommy and daddy government? There's probably a little bit of that," he says. "I look at it as an ingrained philosophy of the people that are in power that say, `We've got to keep on growing the size of state government. We've got to expand to justify our existence.' You can't show me one person that was dying or couldn't get a house or a roof over their head because of the inattention of government."

His political allies say Burdish is the sort of activist who succeeds in relatively small states.

"Dan is a longtime committed conservative who doesn't just talk the talk, he walks the walk," says Chuck Muth, a Burdish friend and conservative political organizer. "He has so much patience dealing with folks that I don't have. He's got nothing but the best of intentions. I don't think he hates anybody. He gets angry at some people who make a commitment to him and say they're going to do something ... and don't do it."

Political player

When asked to list past political victories Burdish notes that he has volunteered for campaigns and served as executive director of the Nevada Republican Party. But he has never run a campaign. Yet he is viewed as a political player who has enough juice that he receives periodic phone calls from Gov. Kenny Guinn's wife, Dema, who will pick up the phone to contact Nevadans she thinks have unfairly criticized her husband.

Burdish received such a call a year ago, shortly after questioning the governor's push for increased taxes. Dema Guinn did not like the tone of an anti-tax letter Burdish had written to a Carson City newspaper. Nevada's first lady has known Burdish for several years, and she didn't hesitate to make the call. "I didn't call him to say, `You said something bad about my husband,' " she remembers. "I called him to disagree."

The two have attended state and local Republican Party functions together. They consider each other friends.

"You either like Dan or dislike him. Dan is very opinionated. Now, he offends some people by that. I've had some disagreements with Dan, but I think that's his right," Dema Guinn says.

Two years ago Burdish and party activist George Harris co-wrote a campaign mailer attacking the legislative candidacy of Earlene Forsythe, a nurse who was running in the Republican primary for an Assembly seat.

The mailer characterized Forsythe and her physician husband as quacks. A duck in midflight was prominently displayed on the flier, which contributed to her nine vote primary election loss.

The state ethics commission dismissed a complaint filed by the Forsythes against the two men, who were key players in the Nevada chapter of the Republican Liberty Caucus, a national organization that opposes big government. Ethics panel members said the flier, identified as a Nevada Liberty Caucus product, lacked malice and was protected by the First Amendment, but they angrily ripped the pamphlet and its authors.

"I think this, these documents right here are scurrilous, shameful, disgusting, but unfortunately ... they are legal," commission Vice Chairman William Flangas said during a September 2002 public hearing.

Burdish defends the mailer, saying it offered the truth in a winner-take-all profession that places a premium on aggressiveness. Earlene Forsythe remains upset by the entire episode.

"It would have been fine if they had discussed the issues, but they came out to destroy and conquer," she remembers. "I would think that you're obligated morally to tell the truth to the voters. I don't understand how that could be considered a First Amendment right to not tell the truth. That's probably why you do not get a lot of good people to run because they're afraid of that."

Early influences

Burdish can be disarming, a serious man who speaks with an easy tone. On the surface he doesn't appear much different than any 52-year-old guy working in a Las Vegas business office. He's not as well-dressed as many. Blue jeans and a pullover shirt displaying his business' logo -- The Car Doctor -- are his wardrobe of choice. His office isn't messy, but it's certainly not clean. A new paint job is long overdue. Oily paw marks mark the trail of an old cat. The odor of recently smoked cigarettes fills the air.

"I'm no `Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,' " he jokes, invoking one of cable TV's popular reality shows.

Burdish was born in February 1951 the youngest of three children. His father, John, was a career Army officer who rose to the rank of major, moving his family from posting to posting, Japan to Portugal, Germany to Libya. He was drawn to politics at a young age, an interest he attributes to having lived in North Africa, where he says he learned to appreciate the United States in a way many Americans do not. His family lived off base, and young Dan had friends who lived in cardboard huts and worked menial jobs to pay for drinking water.

"The kids that I grew up with that were Army brats pay more attention to politics than kids who grew up exclusively in the United States," he says. "In Western Europe or Japan you don't see the gross difference that is out there between the U.S. and nondeveloped world, but when you spend three years in a country like Libya, where the average person has nothing, you realize what you have in the United States and there are responsibilities that go with that."

His family settled in Southern California, where Burdish graduated from high school in 1969. He enlisted in the Army at the height of the the Vietnam War and served 21 months, including a nine-month stint with an artillery unit in the Mekong Delta.

After mustering out of the Army, Burdish moved to Las Vegas, where his parents then lived. He took a job at downtown's Mint hotel-casino as a dealer. The next 15 years saw him fill similar jobs at the Marina and Stardust.

In the mid-1980s he earned a real estate license and along with his domestic partner and Car Doctor co-owner, Dave Henry, Burdish parlayed a $15,000 real estate purchase into a property development company that built more than 60 homes and a half-dozen office buildings, primarily on the east side of Las Vegas.

Burdish became increasingly active in Republican Party politics. He volunteered for legislative campaigns, walked precincts, made phone calls and helped produce mailers. He also attended 1988 party conventions at the county and state levels when some conservatives were pushing the presidential effort of the Rev. Pat Robertson, a favorite of the religious right.

"It just made me mad, got my dander up and made me decide I was going to stay in the party and irritate them," he recalls.

True believer

The early to mid-1990s saw Burdish assume increasing responsibilities within state and county party operations, culminating with the business partners shutting down their property development firm as Burdish was appointed executive director of the state Republican Party. He was responsible for the party's daily operations. He traveled the state, not only stopping in Las Vegas and Reno but also visiting Nevada's smaller counties, where political activists rarely see politicos with a title. He popped up on local news programs, regularly pushing the party line.

The 1994 election brought Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., and the "Contract with America." The Gingrich agenda fit nicely with Burdish's small-government, low-tax philosophy.

"Dan is a true believer. He really believes in a lot of the rhetoric that was put forth by the Gingrich `Contract with America,' " says Paul Henry, a former chairman of the Nevada Democratic Party, who considers Burdish a friend. "I enjoyed debating against him on TV. I think of myself as a true believer as well, so I believe we met on the battleground of ideas."

Burdish's party job led him to a leading role in the 1998 statewide candidacies of Kenny Guinn and then-Rep. John Ensign, two men seeking to become Nevada's highest-ranking elected Republicans in nearly two decades. But Ensign's loss by a 401-vote margin to incumbent Sen. Harry Reid saw Burdish lose his party post, sparking a split that continues today.

Looking in

The source of political conflict is often difficult to determine. Personal agendas skew memories. Key players in the 1998 post-electoral dispute offer varying versions of the lead-up to Burdish's firing as the state GOP executive director.

Burdish is convinced he was the fall guy for Ensign's loss. Former Guinn campaign chairman and chief of staff Pete Ernaut says Burdish's departure was the product of the mismanagement of party funds. Then-state party Chairman John Mason, who is seeking election to the Nevada Supreme Court, said two audits of the state party's books failed to back Ernaut's claim.

"There never was any money missing. No money disappeared," Mason says. "During Dan's term I think he did a great job of administering people's assets."

Burdish says the state party was short at least $350,000 at the end of the 1998 election cycle, and he attributes that to money spent at the request of the Ensign and Guinn campaigns.

"They needed someone to blame the debt of the Nevada Republican Party on," he says. "I put together a memo showing what everybody did and what they were supposed to do, and they went crazy."

Ernaut is largely dismissive of Burdish and the ensuing conflict.

"At the end of the day I don't spend any time thinking about Dan Burdish, and I don't wish him any ill will," Ernaut says. "I'm sorry that it happened. I'm sorry that he still feels that way, but I'm not apologetic."

Whatever the cause, Burdish and Ernaut dislike one another, and that split has contributed to Burdish's reputation as a political activist who is looking in from outside the Republican Party's power structure, especially in a state where Ernaut is a key political player.

"Dan had a lot of potential to be a very effective operative in the state but unfortunately has become embittered and utilized his talents more for negativity and destructive politics rather than party building and getting people elected," Ernaut says. "It just seems over the course of the last few years whether it's Dan Burdish or George Harris they just seem to be involved in every effort to discredit or embarrass the governor or those members of the Legislature that don't agree with their political philosophy."

His firing left Burdish so angry that this advocate for small government drew unemployment benefits for six months despite having enough money in the bank to get by.

"I just went ahead and said, `You know what? The heck with them!' I did not like the way that I was let go," he remembers.

Signature drive

Burdish was upbeat earlier this month after Oregon voters rejected an $800 million tax increase adopted a year ago by that state's legislative leaders. Alabama voters defeated a similar tax proposal late last year. Both moves echo Burdish's threat to place an anti-tax referendum on Nevada's November general election ballot. He says there is a 75 percent to 80 percent chance he will initiate the push before a May deadline to qualify measures for the ballot.

Much of the uncertainty, he says, can be reduced to a single issue: money. He spent $20,000 of The Car Doctor's revenues during last year's legislative session to buy full-page newspaper ads opposing the tax increase. He estimates that he would need to spend another $20,000 to $70,000, depending upon the scope of the effort, to have a shot at collecting some 51,000 signatures needed to qualify the measure for voter consideration. He had hoped to raise much of that money from Nevada businesses, but he's run into some opposition.

"The political establishment does not want this to happen," he says.

The tax increases have been billed as a tax on business, but Burdish says that is a misnomer. "Businesses don't pay taxes. Consumers do."