Sisolak skips White House briefing to protest plutonium shipment

WASHINGTON — Gov. Steve Sisolak continued to boycott National Governors Association functions at the White House on Monday, the final day of the group’s winter meeting in Washington.

Sisolak said he was skipping events with President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence in protest of a shipment of a half-ton of weapons-grade plutonium to a federal facility north of Las Vegas last year — and the administration’s failure to respond to a letter the governor wrote to Energy Secretary Rick Perry.

“The state of Nevada will not become the nation’s nuclear dumping ground,” Helen Kalla, Sisolak’s director of communications, said Monday in a statement to the Review-Journal.

“As the governor has stated,” she continued, “he would meet face-to-face with President Trump any time, any place to have a serious discussion about this issue — fancy balls are not an adequate substitute.”

On Friday, Sisolak skipped a lunch at the vice president’s residence. Sunday night the governor did not attend a White House ball hosted by Trump and the first lady. Sisolak also did not attend a White House briefing with governors Monday morning.

Perry attended the White House gala Sunday night as well as the morning briefing.

“If you didn’t get a response from a letter, you could’ve gotten a response face-to-face,” political consultant Sean Walsh observed of Sisolak’s lost opportunity.

Sisolak did join in on a Sunday breakfast for members of the Western Governors Association hosted by EPA Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler. Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta and Interior Acting Secretary David Bernhardt participated as well.

Sisolak is hardly the first Democrat to boycott a Trump event. While Democrats in Nevada’s delegation turned out for Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, members of the Congressional Black Caucus boycotted the president’s swearing-in.

“This president likes made-for-TV moments. I can see why the governor didn’t want to be a prop in that situation. But it does beg the question: How are you going to fix the problem if you don’t sit down and talk?” Mark Harkins, senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Government Affairs Institute, told the Review-Journal.

The problem for Nevada, as Harkins sees it, is a delegation with “almost zero experience in Capitol Hill right now.”

Catherine Cortez-Masto has been in the Senate for two years. Fellow Democrat Jacky Rosen won her Senate seat in November, after serving one term in the House.

Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., served four terms. Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev., was elected in September 2011. Rep. Steve Horsford, D-Nev., served one term and Rep. Susie Lee, D-Nev., won her House seat for the first time in November.

Those terms can’t compare with the 30 years served by former Sen. Harry Reid. Before he retired in 2016, the then-Senate minority leader was able to wield his seniority to stop the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.

“Harry Reid’s not around anymore,” noted Walsh, who worked in the White House of President George H.W. Bush. Former California GOP Gov. Pete Wilson dismissed Sisolak’s move as “a dumb move with a weak hand.”

“Maybe you’ll get a few cheerleaders from the resistance,” but at a cost of political influence, said Walsh. And it’s not as if Trump has a thick skin and barely notices barbs from his critics.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a former mayor and Democratic lieutenant governor who has sparred with Trump over immigration and climate change, attended the White House ball Sunday night. He told the Los Angeles Times that he has huge disagreements with Trump, but “I feel a deep obligation to rise above that.”

During Monday’s session, Trump singled out Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, another Democrat, as one of 17 “very smart” new governors.

Both Newsom and Pritzker hail from deeply blue states that overwhelmingly favored Hillary Clinton over Trump in 2016.

Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman came to the White House last February to lobby for federal funds to improve 114 miles of Interstate 15. She also used the occasion to thank Trump for coming to Las Vegas after the Oct. 1 mass shooting that left 58 dead.

“That was very meaningful for all of us who lived here,” Goodman told the Review-Journal at the time.

Through a spokesperson, Goodman declined to comment on Sisolak’s decision to boycott the Trump and Pence events.

Contact Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com or 202-662-7391. Follow @DebraJSaunders on Twitter.