GARN'S GOTTA GO
Almost the entire GOP agenda under Mabey’s so-called leadership went nowhere the 2007 session
BY CHUCK MUTH

Chuck Muth is president and CEO of Citizen Out reach. He is a professional political consultant. Find more about him and read more of his work at www.chuckmuth.com. Other stories by Chuck Muth

If Nevada Republicans are ever to have any hope for electoral or legislative success in the state Assembly after this disastrous 2007 session, they need to do one thing as quickly as possible: Get rid of Garn Mabey. 

Recall that after predicting he’d pick up three seats in last year’s elections, the Republican Assembly Minority Leader actually managed to lose one instead. 

Mabey then proceeded to undermine the new Republican governor by blowing off his swearing-in ceremony at the Capital, took freshman Republican Assemblyman Ty Cobb to the woodshed for not voting for Democrat Assembly-liberal Barbara Buckley for Speaker, called Buckley “awesome” every chance he got, continually told Republican activists that he wouldn’t aggressively challenge the Democrats’ liberal agenda, pursued a personal special-interest agenda of his own that benefited his profession, and led his troops into a stupid vote in which every member of his GOP caucus ended up voting against a water conservation bill. 

In the desert! 

And that’s just scratching the surface: He had virtually no working relationship whatsoever with the Republican Senate Majority Leader and held all of one press conference the entire session — a press conference in which he voiced opposition to merit pay for teachers, a core Republican policy position. Nice. 

In addition, Mabey publicly said in a TV interview that he was open to breaking his campaign promise to vote against any and all tax hikes, while simultaneously voicing support for a possible gas tax hike and an increase in the fee you and I pay to the DMV for our driver’s licenses. 

With a “Republican” leader like Garn Mabey, who needs Democrats? 

But the straw that should break the backs of even the most ardent Mabey apologists has got to be how he threw fellow Republican Gov. Jim Gibbons under the bus on the governor’s proposal to pay for various highway construction projects without raising taxes. 

First, Mabey gave only “tepid” support for the plan when it was announced by the governor at a major press conference in May. “Parts of it can be supported; parts of it won’t,” Minority Leader “Maybe” Mabey told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. But what Mabey did next was as inexcusable as it was outrageous. 

In order for the governor to get his no-tax-hike highway construction proposal considered by the legislature that late in the session, he needed one of the legislative leaders to introduce it as an “emergency” measure. But when Republican Minority Leader Mabey was asked if he would do so on behalf of the Republican governor, Republican Mabey told the Republican governor to pound sand. 

“I don’t see any reason to waste one of my emergency bills on something that’s not going anywhere,” he told Las Vegas Sun columnist Jon Ralston.

Heck, almost the entire GOP agenda under Mabey’s “leadership” went nowhere the 2007 session. The least Mabey could have done was help the governor fix our state’s transportation problem without raising taxes, instead of flipping him the bird. 

If Assembly Republicans don’t vote to oust Mabey after this session, they’re hopeless and probably should be challenged in primaries themselves next year.

As Newt Gingrich says, “Real change requires real change.”