County Commissioner Lynette Boggs McDonald says she's paying for the hard-line stand that she took in last year's police contract talks. Photo by Isaac Brekken.

As Lynette Boggs McDonald sees it, accusations dogging her re-election effort are nothing more than the result of the bull's-eye painted on her forehead after the hard line she took in last year's police contract talks.

If the unions succeed in destroying her political career, the incumbent Clark County commissioner said, taxpayers will be the worse for it.

"Then big labor controls the County Commission. It's that simple," she said. "It's bigger than me. Lynette's just the vehicle."

The Police Protective Association and the Culinary union videotaped Boggs McDonald in her bathrobe picking up the newspaper from the driveway of a home outside her district.

That and hours of other footage they gathered of her coming and going from the home clearly show the Republican lives outside her district, the unions contend.

The labor groups filed a lawsuit seeking to have her tossed from the November ballot, alleging she lied about her residence on election paperwork.

The commissioner says she rents two homes, but that her primary residence is in District F, the area she represents. The other, just 100 feet from District F's border and which she hopes to buy, will become part of the district when boundaries are adjusted early next year, she said.

Her husband, however, has supported the union's residency claims in his petition for divorce, which he filed just a month after Boggs McDonald filed for re-election. In the divorce documents, Steven McDonald also accused his wife of being "consumed and corrupted by politics."

Her soon-to-be ex-husband, Boggs McDonald says, has an aim similar to that of the unions: "He said he would destroy me," adding that she would not elaborate for the sake of her two children.

The divorce allegations and residency issues are intertwined, she said, and essentially distractions designed by her enemies to aid her opponent in the Nov. 7 election, Democrat Susan Brager.

"If all the light and heat's just on Lynette," Boggs McDonald said, "she (Brager) is just gonna slide in the back door."

The commissioner made the comments in her most extensive interview since her political fortunes began a dramatic free-fall about three weeks ago.

In early September, Boggs McDonald was the undisputed favorite to win the election even though more Democrats than Republicans reside in District F, the sprawling southwestern valley district encompassing neighborhoods such as Mountain's Edge, Spring Valley and Rhodes Ranch.

With a $1.3 million war chest, the incumbent commissioner had more than 13 times as much money as did Brager to get out her message.

Stints on both the commission and the Las Vegas City Council also gave Boggs McDonald much greater name recognition than the School Board member challenging her.

"She was the prohibitive favorite," said Dan Hart, a political consultant who ran Republican Commissioner Chip Maxfield's successful 2005 campaign. "She was up against a relatively untested opponent who didn't have a lot of name recognition."

Even consultants who work exclusively for Democrats expected a Boggs McDonald victory.

"She certainly had a huge money advantage, a name advantage and the incumbency advantage," said Democratic political consultant Gary Gray, who recently guided his wife, Chris Giunchigliani, to a primary victory in another commission district.

"Everything was going her way with the exception of voter registration showing more Democrats in the district. But Lynette's shown she could overcome that before."

Gray was referring to Boggs McDonald's relentless campaigning that led her to victory over Democratic challenger David Goldwater in 2004 in a heavily Democratic district.

The tide began to turn against Boggs McDonald on Sept. 7, when the unions sued her. Then the next week, union officials filed a complaint alleging she broke state law by paying her children's nanny with campaign cash.

Boggs McDonald said there is nothing wrong with using campaign funds to pay for child care when she is at a political event. Nonetheless she reimbursed her campaign the $1,230 to do away with what she termed a distraction from the real issues in the race.

"We don't have time to focus on a nanny-gate," she said.

Boggs McDonald believes the animosity of the labor groups stems from a vote she made last year to thwart a large pay hike sought by Las Vegas police.

The commissioner was not a member of the board that voted against the pay increase, the Metropolitan Police Department Fiscal Affairs Committee. However, Boggs McDonald voted along with five of her colleagues to remove from that board the sole county commissioner who supported the raise, Tom Collins, ensuring that the proposal would fail.

"That's the reason I made an enemy of the police union to begin with, when they wanted a 41 percent pay raise," she said. "Because I was vocal and said we cannot afford it ... I got the big bull's-eye."

Dave Kallas, executive director of the PPA, said Boggs McDonald has no one but herself to blame for her predicament.

"I would 100 percent dispute we are targeting her," Kallas said.

"Are we unhappy with some of her decisions in regards to us? Yes. But we didn't make her live in a house outside her district. We didn't make her write her baby sitter checks out of campaign funds. She did that on her own."

However, the police union has turned a blind eye to other public officials who have been accused of living outside their districts, such as Commissioner Yvonne Atkinson Gates, who has denied the allegation.

"If that's true, voters should vote her out of office, too," Kallas said. "We got information that she (Boggs McDonald) was breaking the law and acted on it."

But why wouldn't the unions target others such as Rory Reid, one of two commissioners who actually cast votes against the pay raise as members of the Fiscal Affairs Committee?

Boggs McDonald said the union would never target the son of one of the nation's most prominent Democrats, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

"Rory's got a big daddy," Boggs McDonald said. "They're not going to mess with him. That's the political reality of it."

Reid declined to comment on her theory.

What about Republican Commissioner Bruce Woodbury, who also vocally opposed the pay hike?

"He's not on the ballot," Boggs McDonald said. Even if he were up for re-election, she does not believe the unions would seek his ouster.

"He's been there (on the board) since I was a high school student. He's entrenched. I'm the most logical target."

The unions are putting her in the cross hairs as part of a larger plot to have the board dominated by Democrats who will do their bidding, she said.

If they succeed, the commissioner said, it would mean the loss of a vocal fiscal conservative from the board.

"If I'm gone, taxpayers better watch out for their purses," she said.

A new poll shows that Brager might be posing a serious threat to Boggs McDonald. A Magellan Research poll conducted for the police union last week showed Brager leading the incumbent 53.9 percent to 27.5 percent, with 18.6 percent undecided.

The poll sampled 800 registered voters, an equal number from each party, and is designed to be accurate within 3.5 percentage points.

Boggs McDonald said her opponent has yet to offer voters any message beyond "I'm just not Lynette.

"The choice is someone who's delivered for them, who's busted her tail for them, versus someone who doesn't even have a platform but has union friends," the commissioner said. "Susan Brager is weak. She's been there (on the School Board) for 12 years and couldn't get a damn thing done."

Brager said she has a platform, that she has shared it with voters while campaigning door to door in District F, and that the Magellan poll results are evidence that voters like what she has to say.

"I tell them we need to be proactive not reactive on traffic, that we shouldn't have to have deaths to get lights at intersections, that we need more affordable housing and water," Brager said.

Boggs McDonald counters that when citizens complained in 2004 that developer Jim Rhodes had not constructed a school to which he was contractually obligated as part of a development agreement with the county, she was the one who took action.

Boggs McDonald held up home building permits to force his hand.

"It took the county commissioner to have to hold up the building permits for Jim Rhodes to finally get a damned school in Rhodes Ranch. What was she doing this whole time?" Boggs McDonald said.

"I'm not supposed to be dealing with School Board issues. But I had to do my job and her job."

Brager said Boggs McDonald's description is inaccurate, and that she met with Rhodes to ensure he was building the school before the commissioner intervened.

"He knew he was obligated to build the school. We went over the legal documents together," Brager said. "I know how to get things done, and the constituents know it."

Despite the challenge, Boggs McDonald said she won't publicly respond to her husband's accusations, though she has responded in court documents under seal. Even if they weren't sealed, Boggs McDonald still would not malign her spouse, she said, and risk further harming her 10-year-old son.

"I'm a mother first and a politician second," said Boggs McDonald, who also has a 2-year-old daughter. "If putting my children's welfare first costs me my position, so be it. I'm going to take the high road."

Although she blames much of her current political problems on the unions, a defiant Boggs McDonald said she has no regrets about taking her stand.

"I saved the taxpayers money. And if at the end of the day that causes me to be thrown out of office, so be it. I won the battle," she said.

"It's just an election. It's not life or death," she continued. "Anything that I truly value in my life, my faith, my family, no one can touch it. I'll either be a county commissioner or I won't.

"The show goes on."