High court ruling favors Henderson mayor

The Nevada Supreme Court rejected an attempt to remove Henderson Mayor Andy Hafen from office Wednesday.

Rick Workman, who ran against Hafen last year and lost, argued the mayor should be removed because voter-imposed term limits bar local lawmakers who have been members of a “governing body” for 12 years from being elected again.

Hafen served 22 years on the City Council before being elected mayor in 2009. In a separate case, the Supreme Court ruled this year that time as a mayor and time as a councilman should be combined when calculating term limits.

That ruling appears to block Hafen from running again in 2017, the state attorney general’s office wrote in court filings.

But the attorney general and Hafen’s lawyer argued it would be unfair to apply the ruling retroactively and undo the will of the voters who re-elected Hafen in 2013.

The Supreme Court didn’t reject Workman’s request on its merits. Instead, seven justices said he had no standing to file the challenge because his interest in the case is no different from that of any member of the general public.

Workman, who works in the city’s crime lab, referred questions to his lawyer, Stephanie Rice, who said she was disappointed.

“They essentially declined to hear the case based on a procedural matter that has nothing to do with the merits of the case,” Rice said.

Hafen and his lawyer didn’t immediately return calls seeking comment.

The voter-imposed term limits were added to the Nevada Constitution in 1996.

Before this year, it was widely believed city councilman and mayor were separate offices, meaning someone could serve 12 years as a councilman, then another 12 years as a mayor. That was the interpretation Hafen relied on when he ran for mayor in 2009.

But in February, the Supreme Court barred two Reno City Council members from running for mayor, finding they were ineligible because the mayor is also a voting member of the council. The two had already served 12 years on the council.

That ruling does not affect candidates in cities where the mayor is not a voting member of the City Council.

Seizing on the ruling, Workman called for Hafen to resign or be ousted. Early this year, Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto declined Workman’s request that her office try to have Hafen removed. Workman then filed his own court challenge in May.

“To allow Mr. Hafen to remain in office and finish out his current term would defeat the entire purpose of the term limits amendment, by permitting and condoning his service as a ‘career politician,’ serving the city of Henderson for more than 30 years,” Rice wrote in a court filing.

Assistant City Attorney Brandon Kemble wrote that removing a public official and replacing him with a losing candidate would be “unprecedented.”

Rice said Workman did not expect he would automatically become mayor if Hafen were removed and “just wanted to do what was right.”

Hafen’s lawyer, Todd Bice, said Workman could have brought a challenge to Hafen’s candidacy last year, before he was re-elected.

“The law rightly forecloses an unsuccessful candidate from lying in wait, gambling on the election outcome, and then seeking to undo the adverse results more than a year after losing,” Bice wrote. “Such after-the-fact challenges are an affront to the electoral process.”

Contact Eric Hartley at ehartley@reviewjournal.com or 702-550-9229. Find him on Twitter: @ethartley.