Your 2021 in Review: Top 5 Stories on the GOP Primary
1. Las Vegas Review-Journal: Sebelius: For Republicans, gubernatorial primary is the nightmare scenario
For Republicans, it’s the nightmare scenario: a brutal, crowded, expensive gubernatorial primary fight that saps resources and weakens candidates before a tough general election.
Fundraising would have gone exclusively toward building a general election war chest, instead of fighting off fellow members of the GOP in a primary.
Another advantage: A solo Republican nominee could have afforded to chart a more moderate course in the primary, denying the Democrats attack openings in the general.
[Sisolak] can sit back and raise huge sums of money while Republicans are nuking each other, attacks that the governor can now recycle for choice general-election bromides.
When the primary ends, the Republican nominee will be bruised and broke, and Sisolak can start his attacks immediately while his foe spends time refilling the coffers.
2. Las Vegas Review-Journal: Police help ICE seize undocumented immigrants jailed for nonviolent crimes
Las Vegas police help federal officials capture undocumented immigrants jailed for nonviolent crimes, a shift in practice that critics say was never made public.
The Metropolitan Police Department has also instructed jail officials not to record on inmates’ booking logs that they were picked up by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Metro documents show.
But local immigration advocates say Metro’s policy toward nonviolent offenders runs contrary to Lombardo’s public position. They also say the department’s record-keeping practice is nontransparent.
3. Las Vegas Sun Editorial: When a community can’t trust its sheriff, its sheriff must resign
He deceived us. And now, having shown himself as a man who categorically cannot be trusted, he should resign.
It’s appalling that Lombardo would make this policy switch, and do it under cover of darkness. He has outright lied to the residents of Clark County and its voters on an important policy matter.
Clearly, too, he did it for political reasons, to appeal to extremist Republican voters with an eye to an eventual bid for higher office: Now he’s running for governor.
But when he decided to run for governor, his bogus concern for those families flew out of the window. He’s rapidly earning a nickname — Two-Faced Lombardo.
4. The Nevada Independent: Lombardo slams Heller as ‘spineless bureaucrat,’ ups ante in GOP governor primary
Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo portrayed himself as the only Republican gubernatorial candidate with a chance to win in 2022, while unleashing a broadside on rival candidate and former U.S. Sen. Dean Heller as a “spineless bureaucrat” and “washed up baseball player.”
But his attacks on Heller were also indicative of an increasingly bitter fight among GOP gubernatorial candidates jockeying for position with more than seven months until the June 2022 primary election.
Lombardo drew contrasts with his Republican opponents, taking aim at Heller in particular, who previously panned Lombardo as a “liberal.”
5. Las Vegas Sun Editorial: Nevada GOP has fallen far in short time since Sandoval was its leader
And that candidate, Michele Fiore, has a legitimate chance of winning Trump’s endorsement and drawing support from extremist base voters.
Joining her is a large cast of other candidates sounding the sour notes of today’s extremist GOP — spinning out the Big Lie, vilifying immigrants, attacking vaccination and mask mandates, vowing to abolish critical race theory (no matter that it’s not being taught in Nevada’s public schools), etc.
One, former Sen. Dean Heller, has expressed support for Texas’ prohibitive abortion law. Another, Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo, disgraced himself by not condemning the violent right-wing groups that have been welcomed into the Nevada GOP, leaving Southern Nevadans to wonder whether their sheriff will protect and serve everyone in our community regardless of political persuasion.
The current GOP side of the race looks like it will be a sprint to the bottom, with each candidate trying to prove he or she lives closest to the dark heart of the party’s current “values.” Not one has broken away to appeal to the responsible, moderate members of the party, who deserve better candidates. So do all Nevadans, for that matter.
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