CARSON CITY -- Assemblyman Ty Cobb, the freshman Republican who was the only one to vote against Democrat Barbara Buckley's ascension to the speaker's post, was taken to the woodshed by both sides of the Assembly leadership Tuesday.
"In the spirit of bipartisanship, I thought we ought to get together and air out a little issue, and we did," Assembly Majority Leader John Oceguera, D-Las Vegas, said of the meeting Tuesday initiated by Oceguera and attended by Oceguera; Cobb; Assembly Minority Leader Garn Mabey, R-Las Vegas; Assemblyman Morse Arberry, D-Las Vegas; and Assemblyman Bernie Anderson, D-Sparks.
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"We just talked about protocol," Mabey said. "I think it was a great meeting, we'll just move on and I hope things will be fine."
Cobb caused such a stir with his "nay" vote on Buckley's election as the state's first female speaker Monday that some were already predicting his political demise.
Although the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives usually has a partisan, contested election, speakers in recent Nevada history have been elevated by bipartisan consensus.
State archivist Guy Rocha said speaker elections were often contentious in the hardscrabble days of early statehood, when legislators were known to threaten each other with pistols. But in the modern era, the most recent contested speaker's race he could find was in 1953, when two Democrats vied for the nomination.
Cobb did not return cell phone calls seeking comment Tuesday.
Cobb set tongues wagging afresh Tuesday morning when an offhand interjection in a Judiciary Committee meeting was interpreted by legislators and lobbyists in attendance as a swipe at the committee's longtime chairman, Anderson.
Cobb spoke up to note for the record that the Northern Nevada town of Verdi, though named after the classical composer, was pronounced "VER-dye."
Anderson, who had also pronounced the name correctly, said Tuesday he hadn't taken Cobb's comment as offensive.
"Mr. Cobb merely pointed out that's the way it's pronounced, it's VER-dye," Anderson said. "I think he was just saying, this is part of my constituent area, this is how you pronounce it."
Mabey said the freshman from Reno appeared to take the lecture well.
"I think he was appreciative that they would spend the time to talk to him and make him feel like part of the Assembly," Mabey said.
Oceguera said he, too, hoped Cobb had merely made a freshman mistake and would change his ways.
"I think the assemblyman made an error in judgment, he thought about his actions and now he understands that we work together in a bipartisan manner and that there's a certain protocol and decorum to the way we do things," he said.
