Challenge against Buckley too late

CARSON CITY -- The Clark County district attorney's office rejected a challenge Thursday filed by a candidate who contended that Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley could not seek another term.

Mary-Anne Miller, the county counsel in the district attorney's office, said Assembly District 8 candidate Kevin Child filed his challenge against Buckley on Wednesday, two days after the deadline.

"We don't have the authority to do anything because the deadline was missed," said Miller, whose office would have decided whether to go forward on the challenge.

Child, a Republican who is seeking the seat held by Democrat Buckley, said Wednesday that the speaker could not run again without violating the state's term limit constitutional amendment.

The amendment limits legislators to serving no more than 12 years in the same office. Buckley was first elected in 1994.

The term limits amendment was approved by voters in the 1994 and 1996 elections.

But, in an opinion issued three months before the final ratification election, Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa ruled the term limit amendment was not retroactive and would became effective on Nov. 27, 1996, the day the Nevada Supreme Court certified the results of the election.

Del Papa said that meant the term limits clock for legislators would not start until the election in 1998. Buckley, consequently, can run again this fall, but will be ineligible to seek re-election in 2010.

In a decision in 2004, District Judge Michael Griffin of Carson City relied on Del Papa's ruling in permitting state Sen. Mike McGinness, R-Fallon, to run for another term.

McGinness' opponent John O'Connor had sought to disqualify McGinness, first elected to the Senate in 1992, under the term limits amendment.

O'Connor appealed Griffin's decision to the Supreme Court, but justices did not hear the case until 2005. By then, McGinness had won a fourth term in the Senate.

Justices did not review Del Papa's ruling on the effective date of term limits, deciding they lacked the power to remove McGinness since he already had been seated by the Senate.

Each house of the Legislature, under the state constitution, has the sole power to determine the qualifications and elections of its members, the court noted.

While Secretary of State Ross Miller has filed numerous challenges in an attempt to block other politicians from running for re-election this year because of the term limits amendment, he has not challenged any state legislators.