Backstory: Primary colors

By Michael Green

Had enough of primary election analysis? Too bad:

• One of the biggest winners was Chris Giunchigliani. She won her Assembly primary as handily as expected and is a general election shoo-in. But she had a good day in other ways.

Assemblyman Wendell Williams did the most to hurt Giunchigliani and her longtime friend, John Cummings, in the recent Community College of Southern Nevada controversy. Seven university regents and their former chancellor believed Williams and others whom they at least should have questioned, and targeted CCSN officials without any notion of due process. Now Williams is defeated, with no influence to exert. Giunchigliani and Cummings helped Williams' opponent, Harvey Munford, and biting the hand that feeds you would be the supreme act of disloyalty.

In university regent District 13, Giunchigliani's preferred candidate, Gloria Sturman, may reach the general election. It depends on whether Nevada's Supreme Court upholds front-runner Mark DeStefano's removal from the ballot for living in Outer Mongolia instead of the district. Either way, Giunchigliani is rid of incumbent Tom Kirkpatrick, one of the seven, and the ruckus over the regent election can't hurt her effort to trim the board's size and appoint, instead of elect, some of the members.

• The Review-Journal's editorialists and other anti-government, anti-state employee, anti-progress advocates claim backers of Gov. Kenny Guinn's tax package suffered in this election. Yes, but not in the way they think.

If state Sen. Ann O'Connell hadn't offended Big Gaming by opposing Guinn's plan, Joe Heck might not have received the support he needed to unseat her in District 5. So, voting against taxes, rather than for them, hurt her politically, which is either ironic or insane.

In Senate District 6, Bob Beers beat Ray Rawson. On the list of surprises, this ranks with George W. Bush having no record of real service in the National Guard. As an assemblyman, Beers made his bones blasting the tax plan, although he claimed to support another plan that would top $700 million. But it enabled him to brand Rawson--ridiculously--a tax-and-spender. Clearly, voting for the tax plan wounded Rawson. But being wounded and being killed aren't the same.

Rawson is a notoriously poor campaigner, especially compared with Beers. He was a state employee--and he quit, but had been receiving a huge salary for which Beers could have attacked him. His support for UNLV's dental school, and the controversy over its funding and whether he hoped to run it, made him vulnerable. And the district is conservative--probably more so than Rawson. The tax fight helped Beers, but he could have managed without it.

• Will Reno's Bill Raggio remain state Senate majority leader? The primary may tell more than the general election. It matters if you care that higher education in Southern Nevada remains underfunded in comparison with Northern Nevada. O'Connell had been unhappy with Raggio, while Beers fought Raggio's efforts to pass Guinn's plan. One rumor has Raggio trying to team with Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus in some kind of power-sharing arrangement that would keep him in charge, give Democrats more influence and head off Republicans who make the right-wing Raggio look almost reasonable.

• John Mason spent $700,000 and barely made it into a high court runoff over Lori Lipman Brown, who ran her campaign on a frayed shoestring. In other judicial races, especially without incumbents, most women ran well. That trend should make male would-be judges nervous, unless they are named Bonaventure.

• It was a bad day for Joe Neal. Not only did Yvonne Atkinson Gates bury him in their County Commission primary, but Linda Howard, whom he backed for his state Senate seat, barely registered on the radar. And the Culinary Union backed Steven Horsford, although Neal has been strongly pro-labor and might have been expected to be able to call in a chip or two under different circumstances. It underscores the reality that Neal has been losing strength in his district for years.

• What's more amazing: County Commissioner Mary Kincaid-Chauncey losing so big, Tom Collins winning so big, John Bonaventura finishing ahead of her, Vonne Chowning finishing behind her or Kincaid-Chauncey still portraying herself as the world's biggest victim?

She's innocent until proven guilty. But she has been indicted, and the tapes are damning enough to have a political impact, whatever their legal effect. Her response has been to depict herself as a naive grandmother, which may have made voters ask why anyone that naive should be in office--or whether anyone in office really could be that naive.

The general election should be entertaining. If Collins thinks he took some hits in the primary, he's in for much more. Republican North Las Vegas City Councilwoman Shari Buck knows down-and-dirty local politics. And Kincaid-Chauncey, so loyal a Democrat that she was considered lieutenant governor material a couple of elections ago, may be distraught enough over losing to support Buck, who salivated at the thought of opposing her.

• Since most of the earlier predictions in this space were wrong, the biggest lesson from the primary is clear: Historians handle the past much better than they predict the future. That never stops us, of course.