LVN Editorial: Clean break needed from Harry: Send Heck to the Senate

The New Year can’t come quick enough.

Longtime Nevada Sen. Harry Reid’s reign as a U.S. senator ends after 30 years, a time in which the senator gradually did more for his party than his state.

Now, with the election to replace Reid less than a week away. a new representative will emerge to represent the Silver State as the freshly newly minted junior senator.

Nevada is faced with two choices, a former attorney general who tried to prosecute a sitting lieutenant governor and also would not support the state in its fight against the Affordable Care Act but continues to support the scandal-plagued Democratic nominees for President, Hillary Clinton ... or Joe Heck, a distinguished military officer, physician, former Nevada legislator and congressman from southern Nevada.

Catherine Cortez Masto consistently embraces her party’s nominee, her scandalous past, and perpetual lies ranging from the time she served as secretary of state, her usage of a private server for to send and receive emails while conducting official business to the indiscretions of the Clinton Foundation.

And don’t forget, she is Harry’s hand-picked successor — Harry 2.0 — “to his seat” as he told the Las Vegas Review Journal.

Cable TV commentator Doug Schoen, who lives and breathes for the Democratic party, worked for six years in the Bill Clinton White House: Hear what he said on Sunday: “I am now convinced that we will be facing the very real possibility of a constitutional crisis with many dimensions and deleterious consequences should Secretary Clinton win the election.” He also said he could not support Trump, either.

Yet Cortez Masto works the fence, sitting precariously as not to tip to one side or the other. Either she wavers or twists the half-truths and innuendoes against the opposition.

Would she also renounce the DNC’s emails that have surfaced over the months, first trying to discredit the candidacy of Bernie Sanders or how interim DNC chairwoman Donna Brazile, who CNN dismissed on Monday, let the Clinton camp know of an impending question from at of the primary debates in March against Bernie Sanders?

The answer is no. See no evil. Hear no evil. Speak no evil.

When Heck visited rural Nevada more than one week ago, Nevada Democrats didn’t take his trip seriously. Heck made stops in Goldfield, Hawthorne and then Fernley.

Tweeted Kirsten Othman, Reid’s communication director, “Joe Heck is literally campaigning in a ghost town.”

Nevada prides itself on its small communities and former and current mining towns. Reid grew up in a small mining camp, but the hypocrisy oozes.

Said an executive of one of the state’s largest newspapers in Las Vegas when notified of the tweet … “Really wonder why she would tweet this.”

Orthman claims Heck was visiting Goldfield, a small historic town about 170 miles north of Las Vegas on U.S. Highway 95, but the meaning of that tweet goes deeper. Are Hawthorne and Fernley ghost towns? Ely? Pioche? Battle Mountain?

Since he began his campaign during the summer of 2015, Heck has visited rural Nevada numerous times, whether the community has 268 people like Goldfield or 20,000 like Elko or 8,000 like Fallon. His opponent has not done extremely well visiting voters in rural Nevada, and by ignoring the rurals, she is following in her mentor’s footsteps.

Nevada is more than Las Vegas and Reno, and if you expect to represent Nevada, then come visit us.

Our local Democrats would also like to see you.

Cortez Masto didn’t visit the rural counties much as attorney general, either. Churchill County saw current AG Adam Laxalt more in six months than we did in eight years with Cortez Masto.

The lack of integrity seems to dog Cortez Masto like it does her presidential idol. On Saturday, the Boston Globe reported the Thornton Law Firm gave partners bonus checks that mirrored their political contributions, a potential violation of federal law. One spokesperson for a Republican candidate not involved in the contribution controversy said this is a “serious ethical and legal questions” about how Democrat candidates are receiving these contributions including Cortez Masto, who received $23,500. She, along with two others, agreed on Monday to return the money.

This is not the first time Cortez Masto has used questionable judgment. In 2008 and two years before Reid ran for re-election, she indicted then Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki on felony charges, alleging he mishandled the college savings fund when he served as state treasurer. The charges arose from an audit conducted in 2007.

The Associated Press reported no money was missing and he was not accused of embezzlement. His crime: Krolicki spent more money on advertising that allotted by the Legislature.

Cortez Masto recommended hiring a special prosecutor at taxpayer’s expense to tune of over $400,000. Eventually, in December 2010, a judge dismissed the case.

When the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments on the Affordable Care Act, then Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons sent a letter to his AG asking her to file suit to challenge Obamacare’s constitutionality.

She refused, saying type of action would be frivolous and a waste of taxpayer money, a violation of NRS 228.170 that calls for the “commencement or defense of action to protect interest of State ….

“Whenever the Governor directs or when, in the opinion of the Attorney General, to protect and secure the interest of the State it is necessary that a suit be commenced or defended in any federal or state court, the Attorney General shall commence the action or make the defense.”

While Cortez Masto claims she considers herself a person who works with bipartisan legislators, the case against Krolicki and the insubordination of a request made by the governor are hardly bipartisan efforts.

Our fear will be her partisan support of Clinton if she wins the White House but is indicted or taken to the woodshed for her lying and thousands of reappearing emails that supposedly were lost or destroyed.

In his travels around Nevada, Heck, who is a physician, is more knowledgeable about the pitfalls of Obamacare, understands Nevada’s military commitments, doesn’t favor an overreach of Nevada’s land by the federal government, deplores the heavy hand of the EPA in dealing with the state’s streams and lakes.

Cortez Masto appears to be entrenched with families and immigration, but many more complex issues face Nevada, and she has not addressed too many of them, or in the case of her trip across Northern Nevada in July to discuss her tax plan, the press either wasn’t invited (or local Democrats told not to contact the LVN), of in the case of the Nevada Appeal, invited on the day of her Carson City stop.

For us, the standard bearer of what a U.S. senator from Nevada should be is rooted in the professionalism, dignity and bipartisanship of Richard Bryan, who capped his political career as the junior senator from Nevada in the 1990s after serving in the state Legislature, as attorney general and then as governor.

And Bryan would also understand the military’s codes of Conduct and Ethics to which Heck subscribes. Bryan. A distinguished statesman and son of Nevada, also served in the U.S. Army as a captain and graduate of the Adjutant General Corps.

Cortez Masto, you are no Richard Bryan but more like Harry, and for this reason, we feel you will not serve all of Nevada like your opponent. Joe Heck would serve us better.

This is the opinion of the LVN Editorial Board.