Presidents Day heralds Nevada statehood celebration

CARSON CITY — On Presidents Day, none other than Abraham Lincoln, or at least a reasonable facsimile of him, showed up at the Legislature to drum up support for the coming 150th anniversary of the state he helped create.

With an actor playing the role of Lincoln in the galleries, both the Senate and Assembly approved a resolution urging residents to participate in sesquicentennial events that start Oct. 31 and end with the state’s 150th anniversary on the same day in 2014.

On Oct. 31, 1864, Lincoln signed documents that formally brought sparsely populated Nevada into the Union. The president sought the state’s three electoral votes in the 1864 election and the support of the state delegation for the anti-slavery constitutional amendment.

A planning committee for the 150th anniversary has decided to hold a series of special events, including a Nevada Day parade in Las Vegas, to commemorate the state’s admission into the Union. A mobile museum also will travel the state. And the group decided to repair or replace state historical markers.

A permanent anniversary committee has not yet been named by Gov. Brian Sandoval.

Bob Brown, publisher of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and Neena Laxalt, a longtime legislative lobbyist and the daughter of former governor and U.S. senator Paul Laxalt, served as co-chairs of the planning committee.

The permanent committee will try to raise $2.5 million or more in contributions from private interests to pay for celebration events.

No state funds will be spent on the celebration.

Nevada’s admittance as the 36th state came after territorial voters approved a constitution that outlawed slavery and taxed the “net proceeds” of mineral production.

An earlier constitution, opposed by the mining industry, had been rejected by voters. It would have taxed the “gross proceeds” of minerals. Ironically, a resolution before the Legislature this year would allow voters in 2014 to decide whether to tax the “gross proceeds,” a move to get more tax revenue from the gold mining industry.

Lincoln was portrayed at a Monday luncheon by Wally Earhart, a retired state employee who has played Lincoln hundreds of times over the years.

Earhart said that if Lincoln had not been assassinated at the end of the Civil War, he was confident the president would have visited Nevada. He thinks Lincoln would have pushed for the right of women to vote, in part because his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, was extremely interested in government.

Lincoln also would have been pleased by the election of the first black man, Barack Obama, as president, Earhart said.

But he thinks Lincoln would have remained a Republican and a conservative and probably would have voted for Mitt Romney in the last election. Lincoln thought government is best which governs least, so he would not be pleased by today’s large federal government, according to Earhart.

Earhart, of Carson City, has run unsuccessfully several times for public office as a Republican. He said he is the fourth cousin of the famed female pilot, Amelia Earhart, whose story he tells at public events.

In the Senate session, Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki, in a tongue-in-cheek manner, called on the crowd to give Lincoln a big hand and then thanked him for bringing Nevada statehood.

Contact Capital Bureau Chief Ed Vogel at evogel@reviewjournal.com or 775-687-3900.