CARSON CITY -- There are few sure things in life -- death, taxes, the Chicago Cubs won't win a World Series and voters in Nevada's vast 2nd Congressional District will elect a conservative Republican.
So goes the assumption of the campaign ads for the job. It appears Republican candidates Dean Heller and Sharron Angle stuck up their fingers, felt the breezes blowing in the state's cow counties and decided to out-conservative each other. Heller calls himself the "real conservative" in the race, while Angle portrays herself as "the conservative we can count on."
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At the same time, candidate Dawn Gibbons seems to have realized she can't win the I-am-the-most-conservative game, having voted for the record $833 million tax increase bill in the 2003 Legislature. She has decided to portray herself as a reasonable politician who won't engage in political labeling.
"You have to be who you are and willing to do the right thing. ... Conservative and liberal are just words. The issues are national security, illegal immigration and health care. We should talk about them," Gibbons said.
Never in the 24-year history of the congressional district has there been such a lively and entertaining campaign. The 2nd is one of the largest congressional districts in the country, covering all of Nevada's 110,540 square miles except the greater Las Vegas metropolitan area.
Conservative Republican Barbara Vucanovich won seven consecutive election races for the seat by landslide margins. After she retired in 1996, conservative Republican Jim Gibbons won handily five straight times. Neither had a close primary or general election.
Gibbons decided to quit to run for governor, and for once the race is competitive. Each of the three major Republicans has more than $250,000 in their treasuries, which should let them keep their messages before voters through Election Day Aug. 15.
With only 167,000 Republicans registered to vote and a primary turnout predicted at 33 percent, the winner in a close race might draw just 20,000 votes, according to the secretary of state's office.
The winner faces Democrat Jill Derby, a longtime member of the Board of Regents from Gardnerville. Republicans hold a 47,000-voter registration edge in the district.
"I just don't know who is going to win," said Eric Herzik a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. "I felt going in it was Heller's to lose, but his campaign just hasn't taken off. The media (ads) he runs don't tell people why they should vote for him."
Pressed to pick a winner, Herzik selected Gibbons, in part because she is the spouse of Jim Gibbons, the front-runner in the gubernatorial race.
Both husband and wife appear on the primary ballot, and some voters will cast votes for both, according to Herzik. Dawn Gibbons, a former four-term state assemblywoman from Reno, even shows up at ranchers' birthday parties and rural fire station Father's Day breakfasts.
"I don't think any of the candidates are to the right of Sharron Angle," Herzik said. "But I don't think being the most conservative is the path to victory. As long as you are conservative, you are OK in the district."
Despite her proven conservative voting record as a legislator, support for Angle may be dropping, Herzik said.
He points to her failure to secure enough signatures to put a Proposition 13-style property tax limitation on the ballot. And Angle recently replaced her campaign manager with a Republican operative from Washington, D.C.
She claimed that appointment is a sign of how well her campaign is going, but Herzik doesn't buy it. He would not be surprised if Angle draws only 20 percent of the vote.
Heller, secretary of state for the past 12 years, relentlessly attacks the taxing and spending habits of both opponents in attack TV advertisements, as well as feel-good family man ads.
"Dawn taxes and Sharron spends" has become his campaign mantra. Heller portrays himself as one who regularly voted against tax increases during his two terms (1991-95) in the Legislature and reluctantly backed a three-quarter cent sales tax increase in 1991 because the money was earmarked to education.
Angle travels the state bragging of her reputation as the most conservative member of the Assembly during her four terms in the Legislature. Her anti-tax principles were so strong that at times the Assembly votes were jokingly referred to as "41 to Angle."
Angle was the only legislator to vote against the bill that limits annual property tax increases to 3 percent a year and commercial property tax increases to 8 percent. She admits now that the tax limitation law calmed down the outcry about high property taxes and prevented her from collecting more Proposition 13 signatures.
Heller does not hesitate in pointing out Angle voted to let the Washoe County Commission impose a 2 percent car rental tax in 2003, and she voted last year for the $5.8 billion two-year state general fund budget, one 22 percent higher than the previous budget.
Angle seethes over Heller's making an issue of her rental car tax vote, which went to support a stadium. She maintains she worked to amend the bill so the stadium would be built for a Triple-A club, not one in the lower minor leagues, and so the public would not be stuck with a bill to pay if there was a default.
"The tax increase Sharron voted for wasn't for public safety or education. It was for professional ballplayers," Heller said. "That's Sharron's idea of what is a credible and necessary purpose for raising taxes in Nevada. I am more conservative than Sharron. She can talk all day long about taxes, but when it comes to dollars she spends it."
Angle also insists she wasn't actually voting for a tax increase, but to authorize the Washoe County Commission to decide whether to impose the tax.
"Let's compare our records and see as a whole who was the lower taxing person?" Angle said. "He voted for higher property taxes, expanded the estate tax, voted for sales taxes, taxes on water and milk products. I have the proven record in the Legislature of voting for lower taxes and fewer government regulations."
The taxes she mentions Heller supported as a legislator are cited in a Club for Growth TV ad that portrays Heller and Gibbons as a couple of flaming liberals.
The club is a 36,000 member national organization that believes "prosperity and opportunity come through economic freedom." It recommends Angle's candidacy on its Web site and prepared the ad against her opponents.
Angle said she had nothing to do with the ad, but welcomes the group's support and maintains they factually reported Heller's record in the Legislature.
A check of 1991 voting records show Heller voted against two of the three major taxes approved by the Legislature.
Although the Club for Growth ads contend Heller voted for the "expansion" of estate taxes, Heller did not vote for an actual tax increase. He voted for a bill to allow Nevada to claim its share of federal estate taxes, as every other state was doing.
"There is nobody in the race who didn't raise taxes," Heller said. "One of the responsibilities the state has is educating youth. If you had a reason to raise taxes, then that was it."
Gibbons is running her campaign without a campaign manager. Las Vegas political consultant Jim Denton quit the post in May without making a clear public explanation of his reason. Denton said there was speculation he wanted Gibbons to drop out of the race and support Heller because of fear by moderate Republicans that in a three-way race, Angle would win. Denton wouldn't comment on the speculation.
Gibbons defends her decision to vote for the $833 million tax increase in 2003. She noted the bill passed 28-14 in the Assembly and 17-2 in the Senate. She and her husband were authors of the constitutional amendment that requires a two-thirds affirmative vote on tax increases.
"I could have sat back like everyone else in the party and voted against," she said. "I sat on the Ways and Means Committee and tried to make spending cuts. Sometimes I was successful and sometimes I wasn't. The Republicans never offered any specific cuts. If they were serious, they should have had a plan for cuts and taken the heat."
With school districts lacking funds to hire new teachers, Gibbons maintains her vote for higher taxes simply was the right thing.
