Thursday, October 09, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Cover story: Wendell-gate

Embattled lawmaker answers his critics

By Bob Shemeligian

Wendell Williams, who has fought many battles for victims of social injustice, is now in the midst of the toughest political fight of his life--this one for his own skin.

Still, the nine-term state assemblyman remained calm and circumspect during an interview with a Mercury reporter Monday.

"Regardless of who a person is, life is unpredictable," Williams said. "I've always believed it's wrong to tell children everything in life is fair. Life is full of obstacles, and I think one of the biggest lessons you can learn is how to overcome those obstacles and move on."

Any Nevada resident who doesn't live in a cave at Red Rock Canyon is aware of the many obstacles that the veteran Democrat has faced in recent weeks. They include a warrant issued for Williams' arrest by the justice court in Reno after he failed to appear to answer a citation charging him with aggressive driving; reports that he had driven with a suspended license for several months; a $15,000 state fine earlier this year for failure to submit contribution and expenditure reports; a two-week suspension from his job as an administrative officer in the city of Las Vegas Neighborhood Services Department for charging nearly $2,000 in personal calls on his city-issued cell phone; and being required to repay more than a month's worth of salary after city officials questioned the time he worked during this year's legislative session.

But much of the recent attention from the press has focused on Williams' relationship with Topazia "Bridget" Jones, a Community College of Southern Nevada clerical trainee who made unauthorized trips to Carson City during the legislative session and wore an embroidered jacket identifying her as a special assistant to the lawmaker.

Following reports of the relationship and accusations that Williams has used his considerable influence to help get Jones on the community college payroll--despite poor ratings on her job performance and attitude--Jones was dismissed, subsequently rehired and then transferred to a different department.

The strange saga has launched an ongoing investigation by a special counsel, and has all but destroyed a 20-year friendship between Williams and CCSN instructor and lobbyist John Cummings, who says he hired Jones in February after Williams recommended her.

While the 53-year-old Williams, who is chairman of the Assembly Education Committee and speaker pro-tem, admits his cell phone use has been excessive, he adamantly denies many of the recent charges against him--especially allegations of improper conduct with or on behalf of Jones.

"I'm not embarrassed about [my relationship with Jones]," Williams said. "She is a friend--and so is her husband."

Williams explained that allegations that he used his influence to secure Jones a college position are patently untrue. "I never advocated for her--either to help her get the job or to get her rehired," Williams said firmly.

"John Cummings recruited her. He sent her to the Legislature. He says I asked him to send her to the Legislature as a lobbyist, but if you believe that you have to ask yourself why wasn't she a registered lobbyist at the Legislature?"

Williams believes Cummings did not want the university system chancellor or the regents to know Jones was working in Carson City for the college. He also believes Cummings wanted Jones to discreetly work on a bill that would authorize the college to develop four-year curriculums for nursing students and other health workers. The bill in question died in the Assembly Ways and Means Committee.

It's not hard to understand why some college officials would like to see such a program at CCSN, given that Nevada has the worst ratio of nurses to residents in the nation, but Cummings denies he had such an agenda.

"This [proposed curriculum] is in the regents' master plan," Cummings said. "We're already working on a dental hygiene degree. We don't need legislation. If you look at the records, you'll see I've already testified about this."

Cummings stresses that although he did send Jones to Carson City, he did so on Williams' suggestion. "I agreed with Wendell it would be a great opportunity for her, and it would be a help to me," Cummings said. "I needed clerical help, she wanted the experience in the political arena, and I thought she was definitely worthy of being exposed to that experience."

But, Cummings added, while Jones was supposed to be performing clerical duties, "it soon became clear that what she wanted to do was to spend time with Wendell."

On the time card issue, Williams said he can justify the hours he worked for the city during the last session, and that the time cards have been adjusted more than once--and sometimes without his knowledge--to "satisfy the press."

"The city allows us to work while the Legislature is in session to maintain our benefits," Williams explained. "And I was working on a number of projects. But when these stories broke in the press [Neighborhood Services Director] Sharon Segerblom came to me and said, `The press has requested these time cards, and I think the best way to satisfy them is to show a reduction in the number of hours'--to take a hit on the salary--and so I redid them and reduced the number of hours."

In an agreement signed by Williams last month, he will pay more than $6,700 of city salary he collected during the spring session. "I have an agreement to pay back part of my salary, but do I agree I owe them the money? No."

About the failure to file contribution reports and failure to address traffic violations in recent months, Williams said miscommunications and some procrastination on his part helped blow things out of proportion.

And some--such as a May 1 citation issued to him for aggressive driving in his BMW sports car in Northern Nevada--the lawmaker said he didn't even know about.

That ticket was not issued to Williams until nearly a month after the alleged incident, and the original charge was brought by a Reno attorney who filed a written complaint, alleging that Williams was speeding and making unsafe lane changes on U.S. 395. "Any citizen can file a complaint," Williams says.

Other tribulations in recent weeks and months range from suggestions that Wendell P. Williams Elementary School be renamed to newspaper editorials saying that the nearly $50,000 Wendell's wife, Zelda, received from the University and Community College System of Nevada for damages after a college employee uttered a racial slur about her two years ago was excessive.

Critics argue that no lawmaker who had to be sued for child support payments should have a school named in his honor. But Williams said he had a good relationship with his ex-wife, Debra Gray, for years, and that each of them was raising one child, but he and Gray had a falling out in the late 1990s.

"We had been divorced since 1984, and my son [Wesley] was living with me, and my daughter [Briar] with my ex-wife in California," says Williams, who explained that the falling out began when he met and subsequently married Zelda.

Gray then sued Williams for back child support, and in 1998 Williams paid $25,000 in support and $28,000 in interest. "I paid all of it years ago. It hasn't been an issue--until now."

About the racial slur against his wife, Williams is nonplussed that anyone could underplay the emotional damage she suffered when she walked into a community college office in order to meet with a faculty adviser, and she heard a college official say, "She's a nigger, and niggers are never on time."

"The R-J [Review-Journal] wrote that the college shouldn't settle, but when the newspaper was sued by [former managing editor] Mary Hausch [for wrongful termination] they settled, and very quickly," Williams said, shaking his head.

Other rumors and innuendos about Williams are flying these days. One of them accuses him of illegal drug use. "I'm not going to deal with rumors," Williams said. "If somebody has something to say, let him say it."

Political strategists agree on two things: Williams is in the toughest battle of his political life, and if anyone is strong enough to survive, it's him.

As the headlines continue, more documents surface and more public officials became drawn into Wendell-gate, probably the saddest thing of all is that the good work Williams has done for his constituents and for the community over the years could become lost in the shuffle.

"Among African-American elected officials, Wendell is probably the strongest advocate for issues which affect or single out the African-American community," says political strategist Gary Gray.

An example of Williams' long list of achievements is passage of a 2001 law that made racial profiling by police illegal, and mandated a study of traffic stops by police to determine if there was a problem with profiling in Nevada. The study revealed that blacks, who represent about 6 percent of the population, are at the wheel during about 11 percent of traffic stops.

Williams, who often jokes about the charge of DWB (driving while black), was not surprised by the results of the study. "I've been followed around day and night by police officers," Williams says. "When I drove around in my older cars, nobody seemed to have a problem, but after I began driving a new BMW..."

Friends and associates say the assemblyman is not exaggerating when he says he has had problems in Northern Nevada because of the color of his skin.

"I've been with him in restaurants in Carson City and I can tell you Wendell got treated like shit," said one friend. "You don't understand unless you're there. You've got a cowboy, redneck mentality and in walks a black man in a suit. I'm not saying everyone is like that, but Wendell has been subjected to that sort of discrimination, and he's had to face it his entire life."

Williams, who moved to Southern Nevada from rural Louisiana more than a quarter-century ago, began his career as a schoolteacher. He was elected to the Assembly in 1986, and he has worked to preserve the constitutional right of a quality public education for all.

One example is his tireless work on legislation and support of a 1998 bond issue that raised $3.5 billion for new school construction and for the rebuilding of dilapidated schools in older urban neighborhoods.

"A person could move into a new development today, and automatically their children go to a new school," Williams said. "Well, I've got people who have paid taxes for 50 or 60 years and their kids have to go to school in buildings that are falling apart. That's not fair."

If nothing else, Williams is impassioned in his dedication to social causes. Many Southern Nevada residents weren't here in the spring of 1992 when there was rioting in the city after the acquittal of several Los Angeles police officers following the vicious beating of motorist Rodney King.

"At that time, the governor, sheriff and the mayor wanted to call the National Guard and enact a curfew on the West Side," said one veteran public official. "Well, it was Wendell who convinced them that you just can't enact a curfew in one section of the community, and it was Wendell who went out there during and after the riots and convinced the leadership in the African-American community to work hard for peace and to help restore order. It was Wendell who worked hard to calm everyone down."

Such a record sways even the director of the Nevada chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, who is always careful to stress that the ACLU is nonpartisan.

"For us, the issue isn't one of liberal vs. conservative," said Gary Peck. "But Wendell has consistently been an advocate--and not just one for racial justice but also for social justice. He has also long been a voice for many who otherwise would have none in the Legislature."

To some liberal observers, the troubles facing Williams not only affect the veteran lawmaker. They could leave a void in the Legislature that will be hard to fill if Williams' political career ends.

"Something like this taints everything," said one liberal Nevada lawmaker. "And there aren't that many of us [liberals] left. And we need a liberal voice in Carson City--if for nothing else, then at least to balance the `Mean 15.'"

The "Mean 15" was a group of ultra-conservative Republican assemblymen who voted against Gov. Kenny Guinn and other moderates who advocated tax increases in the last legislative session.

Another who said he is deeply disturbed by the ongoing political controversy is Cummings, the community college official who--like Williams--is at the focal point of the turmoil.

"Out of all this, the most heartbreaking thing to me is I've lost one of the two or three best friends I've ever had in my life," Cummings said. "This whole thing is like a Greek tragedy."

Williams is not so dramatic. He implied that he hasn't shut the door on at least a cordial relationship with Cummings, and he plans to continue doing what he does best. "All the things I've always worked on, the work I've always done, will continue," Williams said. "Nothing has changed. I still work for my constituents, and the real story will come out."