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

George Harris is unwavering in his anti-tax stance but garners little respect as man of his word

Anti-tax activist George Harris stands outside his Las Vegas home on Rancho Drive near U.S. Highway 95. Harris is the leader of Nevadans for Sound Government. Photo by Clint Karlsen.

George Harris was incredulous.

His disbelief wasn't about the record tax increase approved by the Legislature or the moderates in his Republican Party who approved the levies.

No, Harris was stunned that an interview about a petition drive didn't include a question he wanted to answer.

"I can't believe you didn't ask me if I'm running for something," Harris said, trailing the reporter from his home, before answering: "I am considering all of my options."

Harris, a 42-year-old Republican activist, is the very visible leader of Nevadans for Sound Government, a group seeking to repeal much of the $833 million in new taxes through an initiative petition.

Political observers and some of Harris' former friends say the effort is as much about Harris as it is about his hatred of taxes. Others say it's as much about Harris' personal dislike of Gov. Kenny Guinn as it is about Guinn's tax proposal.

"I really am just passionate about how they've set this scam up," Harris said. "When I say, `Axe the taxes,' that's what I mean. We have to take an ax to Kenny Guinn, to the establishment and to the crazy things he proposed."

Chuck Muth, a former Nevada Republican activist who worked alongside Harris, said he thinks Harris is waging a personal battle with the governor.

"George has a lot of personal issues with Kenny Guinn that transcend politics," said Muth, now the director of the Libertarian-leaning Citizen Outreach nonprofit group outside of Washington, D.C.

Billboard icon

Although Harris packs a hefty 230 pounds on his 6-foot-3-inch frame, he is even larger than life on the billboard he erected outside his home on the heavily traveled Rancho Drive near U.S. Highway 95.

If you've driven by, it's hard to miss. Harris is in a red plaid shirt with larger-than-life brown eyes that seem to size up your political beliefs.

"Not Done Yet," the sign declares.

This isn't just a billboard, but a personal affront to the state's first couple. Dema Guinn bristles at the mere mention of Harris' name. She has spies at several eateries who phone her to report Harris' dining partners, and she's not afraid of asking those who have met with him what they were thinking.

"I heard you were with that George Harris," the governor's wife noted to a reporter at an unrelated event. "Have you seen that giant marquee outside of his house? He is just so awful, what he does to us."

But Harris has an audience, whether it's those stuck in traffic or those receiving his daily "Libertywatch" e-mails.

"I think if the political history of the Internet's use in Nevada politics is written, George Harris would be regarded as the man who made it happen," said Assemblyman Bob Beers, R-Las Vegas. "He gets it. He knows how to use it and he understands its power."

"George has got a good heart," said Reno attorney John Mason, who chaired the state Republican Party in the 1990s when Harris was party treasurer. "He's got good insight into political issues."

But some Republicans, even those he once considered among his closest allies, say he can be little more than "an embarrassment."

"I don't even talk to him anymore," said Dan Burdish, who once was active in Harris' Republican Liberty Caucus.

History of confrontation

Harris has been butting heads, literally, since his youth.

Harris said he was born in Las Vegas in 1961. His father, Mal, was a well-known television news broadcaster, who would end a 34-year career with KTNV-TV, Channel 13. His mother, Evelyn, worked for 32 years as a waitress at the Stardust's Palm Room.

The couple had five children, with George the youngest and only boy.

From early on in his schooling, Harris found he had more fun goofing off and fighting than studying.

"I was a cutup," Harris said. "I got beat up. I got jumped and I jumped back."

In junior high school, at C.W. Woodbury, Harris said he "designed and managed" ditch day, for which 75 kids decided to join him in not attending classes.

"My dad whupped my rear-end," he recalls.

Harris' parents divorced when he was 14, and he proved a handful at school for his now-single working mother.

He struggled at Valley High School, with two separate stints in reform school, including one at the opportunity school run by Jack Schofield, a World War II veteran who now serves as a university regent.

Harris said his senior year at Valley became so bad his father took him to Orangeville, Utah, to try to get a fresh start. He never graduated, but later obtained a GED.

Harris said he enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1978, shortly after his 18th birthday. He said he served in the 11th Cavalry Border Patrol and three years in Frankfurt, Germany.

Attempts to confirm his military service with the Army were unsuccessful. Harris would not supply his Social Security number. He said he was discharged in 1985 "honorably, thank you very much," and jingled dog tags pulled from a drawer as proof.

Harris said he took classes with the University of Maryland University College while in the military from 1980 to 1984 through a program the school offered. He also said he took classes at Pikes Peak Community College "in Colorado, when I was at NORAD."

NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, is an Air Force operation. Harris provided no specifics about why he would have been stationed there.

Attempts to confirm his educational background with both colleges were unsuccessful.

Many disbelievers

Similar information about Harris is difficult to verify.

He gives his birth date as May 28, 1961. His voter registration lists it as June 12, 1961.

When a reporter recently visited Harris' home-based office, where Harris operates The Harris Group, which sells novelties and music merchandise, Harris declared: "I have the largest Pez dispenser collection on the planet." He has about 20.

Harris' detractors don't believe most of what he says.

"He is full of it," said Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas. "His tactic seems to be to throw out a lie or a half-truth about something and then angrily defend it without supplying any facts to show he hasn't lied."

Harris has been told by the Secretary of State's office in a letter to stop providing misleading information to the public about his petition.

When Harris' organization, Nevadans for Sound Government, filed a petition seeking to overturn most of the tax increase, officials at the Secretary of State's office didn't think the numbers on a fact sheet he was circulating added up.

The Legislative Counsel Bureau confirmed the information Harris was giving voters was flawed. The sheet listed 10 reasons "why you should sign the referendum to repeal the $837 million tax increase."

But his referendum applies only to taxes contained in Senate Bill 8, a total of $617.2 million. And he overstated the amount cigarette and liquor taxes increased under the legislation.

The fact sheet states that "an additional 80 cents" per pack of cigarettes goes to the government. The new tax was 45 cents. The fact sheet also states that Nevada's coffers get 72 cents per fifth of hard liquor sold. The state actually gets 31 cents per fifth.

"They're not incorrect," Harris said.

He argues that instead of listing the amount of the increase, his group listed the total amount of the tax.

Harris has stopped handing out the old fact sheets but acknowledged some of the estimated 90 petition gatherers across the state still might be using them.

Nevadans for Sound Government has until May to collect the more than 51,000 signatures needed to qualify the petition for November's ballot. During the Oct. 31 rally launching his petition drive, Harris said he hoped to have 80,000 signatures by Feb. 14.

"I would say we're not going to have all the signatures we need until the end of April," Harris said earlier this month. "There's no estimate."

Answering critics

Harris also pledged during a November interview that he would turn over the names of every donor to his initiative.

"We'll file and we're going to file," Harris said.

On Jan. 9, coalition member James Dan reported that no information on donors will be made public.

"The people who oppose what we're doing would seek retribution against our contributors," Dan said.

Burdish, once part of the Harris-led Republican Liberty Caucus, said Harris is fond of using information in ways, often erroneously, that support his stance.

"I abandoned the caucus after he said I was a cockroach," Burdish said.

Burdish also is attempting to repeal through referendum some of the taxes approved last year. He said he does not think Harris' petition is legal. The Legislative Counsel Bureau and Secretary of State have told Harris the same thing.

Harris' response: "My lawyers see it differently. What does Dan Burdish know? Dan Burdish is the emotional tampon of the Republican Party."

Inner party politics can be rife with spats such as the one taking place between Burdish and Harris. But those who have been active in Republican Party politics say divisions within the party were most noted when Harris had official positions with the party.

Harris' involvement in politics began, he said, when he returned from the Army and went to work for a wholesale souvenir company. He had purchased a home on Nellis Boulevard and a petitioner came to his door seeking to turn eastern Las Vegas into its own town.

"That got me interested," Harris said.

Harris went into business for himself in 1987, he said, after hopping on a plane with $16,000, flying to Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea and ordering products directly from the companies.

He twice ran unsuccessfully for the Assembly. In 1988 he lost by 500 votes to incumbent Democrat Bob Fay. In 1990 he lost to Democrat William Petrak. "He stole my message," Harris recalled.

Spurned by voters but sparked by small-business political needs, Harris sought a role in party politics. After holding a few positions with the county party, he became chairman and later served as treasurer of the state GOP.

Harris takes credit for turning the party's finances around from a $29,000 debt to having $3.3 million in the bank.

But he also is remembered for several notable election defeats, from the paycheck protection initiative to a recall of Clark County Commissioner Yvonne Atkinson Gates and the $2 million 1998 effort by Sands Inc. Chairman Sheldon Adelson to change the makeup of the County Commission.

Paycheck protection was an effort to curtail unions spending dues on political causes. Harris, who backed the effort, said it failed because "Burdish cut some kind of deal with the union" and didn't file all the petitions. "It was the stupidest deal we ever made."

Muth said much of Harris' dislike for the governor stems from the paycheck protection effort. Harris was working for Adelson, who had engaged in a bitter battle with the Culinary union over his decision not to have his Venetian employees join. Meanwhile, Guinn campaign chairman Pete Ernaut and Republican consultant Sig Rogich opposed the initiative.

Muth was executive director of the state party at the time and said that Guinn approached the party chairman, Mason, at the convention with a warning: "You either have to get rid of George Harris or we're not going to support you for chairman."

"Once Guinn was elected," Muth said, "Mason was told you've got to get rid of George Harris if you want an open line to the governor."

The paycheck issue took Harris out of the party and led to a rift between Harris and Mason.

Mason said he "took a more practical approach" than Harris had wanted.

"George is a dedicated hard-core believer in conservative values," Mason said, noting that Harris wouldn't talk to him for three years after paycheck protection failed.

"He still thinks I was wrong on paycheck protection," Mason said. "Finally, I called George and said, it's been long enough. It was the middle of 2002 and we've been friendly ever since."

But Mason, who is running for the Supreme Court, isn't backing Harris' petition.

"I haven't contributed, I'm not supporting and I don't intend to," Mason said.

Truth issues

Harris has seen his friends wax and wane almost along with election cycles in recent years. He's also drawn the ire of those who run against the candidates he supports in various races because of his active role in campaign mailers and his use of the Internet.

In 1999, unsuccessful Las Vegas City Council candidate Steve Miller sued Harris and his Big Elephant Club over a mailer. The lawsuit was ultimately dismissed. Mailers from the Republican Liberty Caucus during the 2002 legislative elections were designed to help Assembly candidate Francis Allen by referring to her Republican primary opponent Earlene Forsythe, who is a nurse practitioner, and her husband, who is a homeopathic physician, as the "new quack in town."

Steve Wark, who was county GOP chairman at the time and has since married Forsythe's daughter, said elected officials can no longer have anything to do with Harris "because of his failure in recognizing the truth."

"George Harris has a difficult time with the truth to the point of possibly being a pathological liar," Wark said. "He seldom sees successes in politics because it's perceived that he's far more interested in drawing attention to himself than the cause that he's working for."

Rogich said he's never seen Harris "do anything nefarious."

But he noted: "Even now, he's fighting with people who used to be his friends. I can't think of a better guy to head up a failed initiative."

Beers, the Republican assemblyman whose bid for the state Senate is tapping into the same anti-tax sentiment that Harris wields, said he thinks Harris is simply motivated to improve Nevada and will be remembered for being the first political operative to really tap into the Internet for support.

"I don't think he's out there grinding out anybody's agenda," Beers said. "He's just a champion of conservative citizens."