Race for DA draws notice

Nye County District Attorney Bob Beckett has had a pretty easy time of it over the past 15 years.

As an incumbent, he's never participated in a primary contest or drawn more than a single challenger. He holds one of the rural county's highest profile -- and highest paying -- elected jobs, and when he ran for a fourth four-year term in 2006, no one opposed him.

This time around, though, Beckett is in for a fight.

The district attorney has drawn six challengers, including two of his own deputies, a disgraced Clark County judge, and the Libertarian Party's 1992 candidate for vice president of the United States.

It doesn't take a seasoned political analyst to figure out why. This election marks the first time Beckett has had to defend his seat since the bizarre events of June 15, 2008, when he was arrested after he crashed two vehicles in six hours on the same stretch of California highway.

"Blood in the water ... that's why so many people are running," said Ron Kent, a longtime deputy prosecutor whom Beckett fired shortly after he announced his candidacy.

Other challengers include Pahrump attorney Nancy Lord, the aforementioned vice presidential candidate now running as a Republican; and former Clark County Family Court Judge Nicholas Del Vecchio, who was removed from the bench in 2008 after admitting to numerous sexual improprieties.

Rounding out the list of challengers so far are Deputy District Attorney Charles Watkins; Las Vegas private attorney Michael Root; and Brian Kunzi, an 11-year resident of Pahrump who heads up the insurance fraud unit for the Nevada Attorney General's Office.

Beckett, who earns a base salary of about $106,000 and another $21,000 a year in longevity pay, was the last of the group to file as a candidate.

He said he "absolutely" expects his opponents to bring up his day of two crashes in 2008, an incident he refers to simply as "the rollovers," but he warned that such negative campaigning could backfire.

"Everybody has to be careful about throwing rocks," he said.

That's certainly true for Del Vecchio. The former Clark County family court judge was removed from office by the Commission on Judicial Discipline in October 2008, after he admitted to numerous improprieties, from making offensive remarks about his co-workers to having sex in hotels with a staff member during working hours.

At his disciplinary hearing, Mary Boetsch, special prosecutor for the commission, said Del Vecchio was "constantly on the prowl" and had "no business being a judge."

The commission's ruling barred him from ever again seeking judicial office in Nevada.

Del Vecchio said he decided to enter the race for Nye County district attorney because he wants to "get back into the system."

"I've done my penance and paid my debt so to speak," he said. "And I think I can do a bang-up job."

Even if he isn't elected, Del Vecchio said he hopes to parlay his candidacy into a job as a deputy prosecutor in Nye County by throwing his support behind the eventual winner.

"None of the sitting judges (in Clark County) will hire me. I'm a leper so to speak," he said.

But Del Vecchio sees a distinction between his past and that of the incumbent.

"At least with me, I admitted what I did. I attended and completed counseling," he said. "Until Mr. Beckett does something similar, he's going to have some problems."

In March 2009, Beckett pleaded guilty in California to misdemeanor reckless driving and agreed to complete a class on the dangers of alcohol and automobiles.

As a result of the plea deal, he was not prosecuted for the more serious charge of drunken driving, which was filed after police said Beckett failed a breath test at the scene of his second accident on June 15.

Beckett has said he drank one beer with dinner after he totaled his county-issued sport-utility vehicle in the first accident, but he denied consuming any other alcohol that day. He has blamed the crashes on a pre-existing medical condition that went undiagnosed until a few weeks after the accidents, when he fainted at his house and was taken to the emergency room.

But one of Beckett's opponents isn't buying that.

"He's acting like he's taking responsibility for it (the accidents) when he's not," said Kunzi, who served one term as Mineral County district attorney in the mid-1990s, then tried for the Nye County job but lost to Beckett in 2002.

Kunzi said he expects all of the scandal to make for an "interesting" campaign, but it isn't something he plans to talk about unless he is asked about it.

"That stuff is out there, but that's not what I'm running on," he said.

Root, who has run unsuccessfully for judge in Clark County several times, said he intends to avoid his opponents' baggage as he looks to unseat Beckett.

"I plan to have pretty positive message," he said.

Lord, meanwhile, indicated she will go on the attack, but she said she plans to focus on how Beckett runs his office not his personal affairs.

In her opinion, the Nye County District Attorney's Office gives "short shrift" to property crimes, even cases involving repeat offenders, while throwing its full weight behind cases that amount to petty political squabbles.

"Anyone who irritates them, they come after them with the Roman Army. That's why I'm running," said Lord, who also made an unsuccessful bid for mayor of Washington, D.C., as a Libertarian in 1990.

One minor bit of awkwardness looms for Lord. Last year, she represented a group of Pahrump residents in a lawsuit against the county for which she now hopes to serve as legal adviser.

The lawsuit over plans to build a federal detention center in Pahrump was quickly decided in the county's favor, but Nye County commissioners are not likely to forget that Lord was the attorney who just sued them.

Then there is Kent, who had his own brush with the law in September 1999 when he crashed a county vehicle and was arrested for drunken driving.

He pleaded guilty to the charge a month later, served his sentence and kept his job.

In fact, Kent remained on staff as Beckett's chief deputy in charge of civil matters until last month, when Kent announced his candidacy and Beckett fired him.

Kent insists it was no coincidence. "If you ask me if I was fired in direct retaliation for my filing to run for office, my answer would be, 'absolutely and beyond a shadow of a doubt,' " he said.

Beckett denies the move was politically motivated, but he said he can't discuss why he fired Kent because it is "a private, personnel matter."

Watkins, the other deputy prosecutor who has thrown his hat into the ring, remains on staff at the district attorney's office. He could not be reached for comment.

In the June 8 primary, Beckett, Kent, Lord, Root and Watkins will do battle on the Republican side, while Del Vecchio and Kunzi face off on the Democratic side.

Beckett has already gotten a taste of what he's up against. Three months after his disastrous day of two crashes, he lost a bid for district judge, finishing a distant third out of three candidates in the primary election.

He expects a different outcome this time around. He said his challengers are in for an education in politics.

"Lawyers are sometimes compared to sharks," Beckett said.

"The people who think they're smelling blood in the water, it may be their own."

Contact reporter Henry Brean at hbrean@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0350.