ASSEMBLY DISTRICT 13

When Democrat Andrew Martin looks at the breakdown of registered voters in Assembly District 13, he can't help but smile.

"It simply looks great," he said recently as he held a spreadsheet that showed there are about 2,000 more Democrats in the district long held by Republican Assemblyman Chad Christensen.

That statistic, the 44-year-old Martin said, with his background in finance and a door-to-door campaign promoting "new ideas," should be enough to unseat the 38-year-old Christensen, who almost didn't run for his fourth term this year.

Christensen, a businessman who oversees an investment fund, waited until the last day that he could to file for office.

"I wanted to make sure my political work wouldn't interfere with my being a good father," Christensen said, adding that he believes he worked out a solution for his family should he be re-elected.

"I'll take my wife and five children to Carson City for the 2009 legislative session," Christensen said. "It will be the first time I've done that, and my family is excited about it."

The two major-party candidates are joined in the race by Independent American candidate Leonard M. Foster.

Much more has to be done "to get rid of illegal immigrants," said Foster, a 48-year-old businessman who deals in water filters. "The money spent on them for free health care and incarceration costs could go toward education for our children."

Christensen said he is firmly against raising taxes. He said that position is favored by voters in his district, a huge area which includes the western edge of the metropolitan area, extending out to the Clark County border.

"I hold fast to the belief that government has to do more with less," said Christensen, who added that he always has made finding funding for the public safety sector a priority.

In the next Legislature, Christensen said, he would like to study sources of transportation funding and the feasibility of toll roads to deal with the transportation challenges brought about by the state's burgeoning population.

Martin, a certified public account, said he would push to make Nevada a world-class innovator in renewable energy and high-energy efficiency technologies.

"We can reinvent Southern Nevada's economy into the Silicon Valley of energy independence," he said.

He proposes that Nevada and other Southwest states form the "Southwest Renewable Energy Cooperative" as a vehicle for building renewable energy plants and transmission facilities that include harnessing solar and wind power.

Homes and buildings should be retrofitted with solar power, he said.

"This will create thousands of jobs and break our dependence on oil," he said. "I am proposing nothing short of a green energy version of the New Deal."

Contact reporter Paul Harasim at pharasim@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2908.