Democracy in Peril

By Steve Sebelius

BITE ME, WARK: At a recent local gathering of the Society of Professional Journalists, political consultant Steve Wark complained that the Review-Journal in general--and "a columnist," i.e., your humble scribe, in particular--had taken sides in the recent election between then-Assemblyman Bob Beers and then state Sen. Ray Rawson.

Wark represented Rawson, and like most of Wark's other clients, Rawson lost.

But that wasn't Wark's lament: Instead, he claimed he didn't even recognize the Ray Rawson depicted in the Review-Journal.

Lay aside for a moment the irony of a man whose campaign fliers featured lies piled thick and deep lecturing the media about truth. Could Wark's confusion be a result of the fact that the Rawson depicted in campaign literature was himself partly fictional?

We never read--even in Beers' fliers--about the Ray Rawson who testified twice in the murder trial and re-trial of one Ray Krone in Phoenix. Rawson, a dentist by trade who provided expert testimony in forensic dentistry, testified that bite marks found on the body of a cocktail waitress were left by Krone. But after more than 10 years on Arizona's death row, DNA evidence proved Rawson wrong.

And on the very day that Krone was exonerated, Arizona prosecutors asked for DNA testing in another case in which Rawson had testified. The DNA evidence in the case against accused murderer Bobby Lee Tankersley is not as clear, but defense lawyers are moving forward with a challenge based in part on Rawson's testimony.

Rawson has given up forensic dentistry, according to an assistant quoted in the Review-Journal.

Is THAT the Rawson whom Wark was referring to? Because aside from a critical column in the R-J, the fact that Rawson helped send one and perhaps two innocent men to death row wasn't really highlighted in the paper.

Then again, we can forgive Wark for his impression that the Review-Journal took Beers' side. After all, when there are so many lies spread about a candidate, articles correcting the record can seem like advocacy.

For my part, I can say that I don't agree with Beers on many political issues. (He opposed the gross receipts tax at the 2003 Legislature; I didn't. He's not a big fan of social programs; I don't oppose them.) But I know Beers well enough to know it was the picture painted by Rawson's campaign under Wark that was unrecognizable.

Rawson's fliers said Beers sides with the ACLU over the Boy Scouts; he doesn't. Rawson's fliers said Beers was a Libertarian; he's not, although he did speak at one of their meetings. A Rawson letter said Beers fought putting a plank in the 2002 Republican platform supporting an initiative to ban gay marriage; he didn't.

Rawson isn't evil. He gave decades of service to Nevada, and was a leader on many important issues. But he was seriously wrong in his testimony in at least one murder case, and seriously wrong again in his campaign against Beers.

That's a clear picture that everybody but Wark seems to see.