Be my party doll

In the midst of a withering recession, any public official more concerned with Nevada's economic recovery than his own wealth and power would be finding ways to slash government taxes, overhead and meddlesome regulations to encourage private businesses to hang on and eventually create more jobs.

But man oh man, not Nevada state Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford, D-Las Vegas. He wants to beef up the bureaucracy, hand out raises to state workers already enjoying compensation and job security undreamed of by the sheeple who bend double to carry around their palanquins at the trot, and fund this spending spree by raising taxes on the peasants by at least another $1.5 billion in the next biennium.

Good heavens. Is there any way to get a meeting with Emperor Horsford and his lesser potentates before they strike this blow, to sit down to dinner with them, perhaps, and urge them to spare your business, your industry, from the headsman's axe they're freshly sharpening?

Sen. Horsford is glad you asked that question! In a fund-raising letter he mailed out to potential vict ... er, donors in July, this smooth operator set forth a price list for various levels of available "access."

Want a private dinner with the majority leader and the chairfolk of all his subordinate Senate committees? Just like a patron of the Cherry Patch or the Mustang Ranch, wondering what your choice of pleasures might cost, you'll be pleased to know Sen. Horsford's letter presented a price list, specifying that anyone ponying up $25,000 would be guaranteed just such a "private dinner."

Donors paying between $10,000 and $25,000 would get a dinner not with the entire Democratic leadership, but with Sen. Horsford and any one committee chairperson selected.

Lesser contributors would have to settle for "nooners," apparently. Mr. Horsford's letter explained a person or organization "donating" less than $10,000 would get only a luncheon or "reception" with Sen. Horsford or a chairperson.

Matt Griffin, a deputy to Democratic Secretary of State Ross Miller, said last week, "There is nothing in the letter that violates the law." Not in most Nevada counties, anyway.

Mr. Horsford's opposite number, GOP Senate Minority Leader Bill Raggio, who usually can't wait to sign on with any big-government initiative the Democrats dream up, did find the letter a bit "heavy-handed," he said last week. "If you paid you got a dinner; if you didn't pay, you didn't get any consideration."

By Wednesday, Sen. Horsford opted to "withdraw" the price list in question, explaining, "If our fundraising letter has been misconstrued, we deeply apologize." Leaving many an observer to wonder in what other way it could possibly have been "construed."

Look: People who donate to political campaigns expect their phone calls to get through to the office-holder lickity split when they've got a problem with a piece of legislation or a balky bureaucrat. Most adults have figured that out.

But this went a bit beyond the pale.

Steven Horsford has just hung a "for rent by the night" sign around his own neck. Promising to hide his price list till after the election can't change that. The question now is: Do any of those fellow Democratic committee chairs who he offered to bring along on his "dates" have time before Nov. 2 to convince their constituents they're not in the same line of work?

Or do they just not care to bother?