Longtime Nevada political consultant dies
Jim Denton, a longtime Nevada political consultant who led campaigns across the state, died July 25. He was 71.
Denton was the political adviser and strategist for some of Nevada’s leading politicians, including former Republican Gov. Jim Gibbons and others running for city councils, the Nevada Legislature, the Nevada Supreme Court and everything in between.
Dani Denton, Jim Denton’s wife, said the two began working together once they were married in 1999. She moved to Nevada several years later, where she worked on communications for the campaigns they ran while he focused on strategy and working with candidates.
The pair stayed local to work in the state because of Jim Denton’s extensive knowledge of the small political community, she said.
“He knew most of the players, and he knew that what was important in Reno was not the same thing as what was important in Las Vegas,” Dani Denton said. “He knew how to structure campaigns for either rural Nevada, Northern Nevada or Southern Nevada.”
Jim Denton was most proud of two constitutional amendments that he helped pass during his career, his wife said. First was the so-called Gibbons tax restraint initiative, a 1996 constitutional amendment that set a two-thirds requirement to raise taxes.
Second was the Education First initiative, a constitutional amendment passed in 2006 that requires the Legislature to fund the state’s education budget before any other budget passes.
Sig Rogich, a Nevada political consultant and longtime friend of Denton, said the pair spent their time working on political campaigns and betting “on their favorite sports teams.”
“He was very principled,” Rogich said. “When you have a lot of ingredients going in, I think that sets the tone and tenor coming out. I always appreciated that. He was very candid when he didn’t agree on issues.”
Those skills, former politicians and peers say, were what helped him successfully find candidates to back. Jim Denton, a registered Republican, did not limit his work to that party.
“He was very interested in the candidates’ opinions about the policy they wanted to put forward, and if he believed in those policies, he figured out the best way for those to be presented to the public, and that was always his strength,” said Randolph Townsend, a former Republican state senator.
His strength was also in identifying the issues that candidates should focus on, based on public interest. Townsend recalled a time when Jim Denton worked with him on a campaign in which Townsend wanted to focus on education policies. But the consultant pushed back and said that public polling showed that addressing crime was more important to voters.
“He said, I know you have expertise in all this stuff — nobody cares about it. They expect you to do that. That’s your job. That’s why they put their trust in you to go deal with state problems. Now they’re not interested in most state problems. They’re interested in bread-and-butter issues. In this case, crime.”
Bernice Mathews, a Democrat from Reno who in 1994 became the first Black woman to be elected to the Nevada Senate, said Jim Denton led her campaigns.
Mathews said she was struck by his intuition and commitment. She said she owed her political career to his recruitment and the campaign work that he and his wife did for Mathews.
“If he tells you it’s blue, it’s blue,” she said. “If he tells you he’s going to help you, he’s going to help you.”
Beyond politics, loved ones described Denton as generous. District Judge Susan Johnson said he reliably helped her with various charitable efforts.
“Anytime we needed toys or something, he wrote a check, or he actually went out and bought toys because he enjoyed it,” said Johnson, who began working with him on her judicial campaign in 2005. The Dentons also worked with her husband, District Judge Eric Johnson.
Campaigning together led to a long-lasting friendship between the couples, Susan Johnson said. She recalled cruises and trips to historic battlefields after Denton’s retirement.
Denton was born in Germany as “a miracle baby,” weighing 1.5 pounds, family wrote in his obituary. He was born to an American soldier and spent his early years living around the world. He moved to Nevada in the 1970s, Dani Denton said.
“He always tried to do what was right by the state,” Dani Denton said.
Contact McKenna Ross at mross@reviewjournal.com. Follow @mckenna_ross_ on X.
