Every vote at every address counts in North Las Vegas

I don't blame them for wanting to support their favorite candidate. After all, they're related.

Although they seemed quite surprised when I called Tuesday, someone in the household at 6141 Rising Circle had to believe someone like me would eventually be contacting them.

By my count, there are six adults registered to vote at the North Las Vegas house, a five-bedroom place with 2,931 square feet of living space. The home's co-owner, Wade Wagner, defeated incumbent Richard Cherchio by a single questionable vote in the Ward 4 North Las Vegas City Council race.

That narrow margin has Cherchio's camp busy searching for problematic votes like coins under couch cushions as it prepares to mount a legal challenge. The outcome has reporters cross-checking voter lists, too.

A highly contentious race that ends with a single-vote finish will do that to people.

And there's something else to consider. This race happened in North Las Vegas, which hasn't been a paragon of political virtue in recent years. Back in 2002, Clubhouse Tavern owner and motorcycle lobbyist Gary Horrocks was caught registering Harley riders and Budweiser enthusiasts at his North Las Vegas bar. He used the addresses of empty houses in Assembly District 37 to establish the false residency in an attempt to stack the vote. Horrocks got caught and eventually was convicted of clumsily tinkering with the election process.

Not that anyone is suggesting such ham-handed shenanigans took place in the Ward 4 race. But mean-spirited, close campaigns tend to wind up mired in the tarry muck of fraud allegations.

And that begs this question to Wade Wagner:

Just how many registered voters are in the house these days?

Dad Wade and mom Rebecca have eight children in what he calls a blended family.

Searching for an answer, I called the Rising Circle address. I spoke to registered voter and family member Taylor Robb, who declined to explain whether he lived at the address he voted from.

When I asked Wagner how many people were registered at his home, he replied, "That's a good question. I know all my kids are. This is their home. This is where they're all registered. That's where they vote from."

When some are away at school or traveling, they maintain the Rising Circle address, he says, adding that he did the same thing when he was a college student.

The newly elected councilman declined to clear up my confusion with specifics about the different names registered at his house.

"I'm up for public scrutiny because I ran for office," he says, adding that he wasn't interested in discussing particulars about his family's voting record.

Careful, councilman. Those votes might come in handy if a new election is called. That's obviously what Cherchio is after.

"We have to go back to the original issue of a one-vote margin, one invalid vote that was cast," Cherchio says. "There's no way that, in our minds, that constitutes an election."

But all the controversy does constitute an increasingly expensive process, NLV Mayor and Wagner supporter Shari Buck says, noting the figure has risen in excess of $100,000 at a time the local government is financially strapped.

Besides, she really likes the new guy.

"In my mind, it's over and we're moving forward," Buck says. "You're seeing a staff and a council pull together. There's been a whole change of morale or attitude, where everyone is moving forward to solve the serious problems that we have."

And before?

"We had a council that was more fractured and, unfortunately, had many more political agendas," Buck says. "I just see all of that being put aside now and moving forward for the good of the city."

Wagner has only been on the job a week. Imagine how positively ecstatic Buck will be after he actually settles into his office.

Although I hate to spoil all the excitement, I think I hear voter registration lists rustling in Richard Cherchio's hands.

John L. Smith's column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. E-mail him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call (702) 383-0295. He also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/Smith