Nevada’s GOP could learn something from Kenny Guinn
It's telling that the late Kenny Guinn, easily Nevada's most successful Republican governor in at least 40 years, wouldn't get the time of day from the state party if he had run this year.
No doubt he would have been ridiculed as a Republican in Name Only. His credentials as a conservative would have been mutilated.
And Nevada and its schizophrenic Republican Party would have been the poorer for it.
The greatest challenge facing the GOP in this state is its embrace of hard ideology over political pragmatism. It's something to think about on the day Guinn, a pragmatic consensus-builder, is remembered.
The son of a sharecropper, Guinn was a generous spirit who never let party politics get in the way of doing what he believed was right for Nevada, former Nevada Govs. Richard Bryan and Bob Miller tell me.
Bryan and Miller know of what they speak. The fact that these lifelong Democrats speak so glowingly of Guinn while the state Republican Party issues a typo-tarnished, 51-word statement on the man's passing speaks volumes about the state of the Nevada GOP.
In office, Guinn was tarred as a liberal -- no mean feat considering he had served as a banking and gas company executive and had spent his business career adhering to conservative political practice. Truth told, Guinn wasn't an ideologue -- a great sin today. He valued public service and people above politics.
"I think the thing that people should appreciate about him is that nobody in the state's history has a more impressive record of public and private service than did Kenny Guinn," Bryan says. "Decades before he ran for public office, he was the go-to guy for public officials."
Guinn chaired the fledgling and terribly political Metro police finance commission, which had the difficult task of determining how much the city of Las Vegas and Clark County would contribute to the newly formed countywide department.
"He looked at anything that could help the state," says Miller, the former Clark County District Attorney during Metro's formative years. "He was always there. Obviously, he was a Republican in elected office, but he always made his decisions based on what he thought was in the best interests of the state of Nevada."
Guinn was also the chairman of Republicans for Miller during the Democrat's record 10-year gubernatorial tenure. He was criticized, but when it came time for him to run for governor Guinn had built relationships in both parties.
Could Guinn have pulled that off today without being labeled a traitor?
Although he had never held elected office prior to taking office in 1999, Guinn had plenty of real life political experience. He was the superintendent of the Clark County School District when the community was transitioning from segregation to integration.
"Guinn was not a partisan," Bryan says. "He was a Republican, but he was always willing to do whatever you asked him to do to be helpful to the state. He had the ability to bridge the divide between Democrats and Republicans. He was frequently derided as a RINO but he had the ability and desire to do what was helpful to the state. Whether the governor was a Democrat or Republican, he always responded to the call."
In today's poisonous political environment, that kind of fair-minded leadership should be prized and respected. More often, it's derided as weakness and lambasted as a character flaw.
"Here's a man who dedicated his entire life to making Nevada a better place to live," Miller says. "He made his decisions based upon what he thought needed to be done. He was elected as a Republican, but he governed as a Nevadan."
Through it all, Kenny Guinn governed as a Nevadan.
What a novel and noble idea.
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.
