Bob McCleary Assembly incumbent says check was meant to pay foe to become manager of his re-election campaign David Adams, a candidate for Assembly District 11, holds the check that he says Assemblyman Bob McCleary offered him to drop out of the race. McCleary's bank account information has been blacked out to protect his finances. Adams decided to stay in the race and never cashed the check, which McCleary says was not a bribe. Photo by Jeff Scheid.

At first, when Assemblyman Bob McCleary asked David Adams not to run against him, Adams agreed. Then he had second thoughts.

"He said I'd be doing him a huge favor if I didn't run," Adams said. "He wrote me a check for $500. ... I decided I wasn't going to let him play me like that."

Adams says McCleary tried to bribe him not to run.

McCleary says he did try to talk Adams out of running and acknowledges writing the check, but he says it was not a bribe.

"He said he didn't even want to run," McCleary said. "After that, after he said he wasn't going to run, he said he wanted to learn how to run a campaign."

McCleary offered to let Adams work on his re-election campaign and gave him $500 to serve as his campaign manager, he said.

Bribe or not, Adams had a change of heart. He already had withdrawn from the race, but he contacted the county Election Department and withdrew his withdrawal.

Adams and McCleary are both Democrats running to represent Assembly District 11, an urban East Las Vegas district that extends into North Las Vegas. The only other candidate in the race is a third Democrat, Ruben Kihuen.

There was a Republican, Char Littlefield, in the race, but she dropped out and stayed out. Littlefield said she withdrew for personal reasons and wasn't asked to do so by any other candidate.

By law, when the only candidates for an office are three candidates of the same party, the primary election serves as a runoff, with the top two candidates going on the general ballot unless one wins more than 50 percent of the primary vote. In that case, the winning candidate wins the race.

Nevada has closed primaries, meaning that only registered party members can vote in each party's primary. This year's primary election is scheduled for Aug. 15.

Candidates had from May 1 to May 12 to file their paperwork to run for office, then a 10-day period during which to withdraw. Adams filed on May 9. A week later, he says, McCleary called him.

"Assemblyman McCleary sweet-talked me into dropping out, and I can't believe I let him," Adams, a 28-year-old auto mechanic, said. "He said he couldn't afford to split his war chest between two candidates (opponents)."

After he had time to think about it, Adams said, he changed his mind.

"I felt he had done nothing but play me, like I was his sap," he said. "I wasn't going to let him get away with it."

Adams said he believed the $500 check, which he never cashed, was a bribe, and he said it reflected poorly on McCleary.

"I don't think it says much for his character if he's going around trying to fix elections in his favor," he said.

On May 17, the day after he dropped out of the race, Adams rescinded his withdrawal, but it wasn't clear whether it was legal for him to do so because the filing period had ended, County Counsel Mary-Anne Miller said. The statute that allows candidates to withdraw doesn't say whether they can undo the withdrawal.

"We needed a judge's ruling because it was a question of law," she said. There was no precedent for such a situation, Miller noted.

District Judge Lee Gates ruled earlier this month that Adams could stay on the ballot because he had rescinded his withdrawal within the 10-day withdrawal period.

Adams also brought up the alleged bribe in the court hearing, but it didn't have any bearing on the issue, Miller said.

"The judge didn't really address that," she said. Even if Adams' claims are true, she said, it would not have been illegal for McCleary to bribe him to stay out of the race.

"There isn't anything in the statutes that says you can't pay someone to withdraw," she said. "That's a policy question for the Legislature to address."

McCleary, a 45-year-old public relations officer running for a third term in office, says the words "campaign manager" are written on his check to Adams.

"I did not pay him to get out of the race," McCleary said. "I sat down and talked to him and asked him to consider withdrawing. I said, 'Because of you, I'm going to have to do a primary and a general (election). I'd rather just do it once.'"

McCleary said Adams' mother, with whom Adams lives, concocted the bribery story and planted it in her son's head. "I'd hate to think he could be bought for $500," McCleary added.

Kihuen, the third candidate, is a Mexican-born 26-year-old who works as an academic adviser at the Community College of Southern Nevada and previously worked for Sen. Harry Reid and the state Democratic Party. He said McCleary hasn't done a good job of representing District 11.

"People are definitely ready for change in the district," he said.

Trying to convince someone else not to run, he said, was the wrong way to try to win the election.

"Someone who's a strong incumbent would go out and present his record and his effectiveness to the people," Kihuen said. "I want to show people that politicians can have good ethics."