(Michael Zahara) – Here’s the scoop! In mid-2009, a super-secret group consisting of the Republicans, the Mormons, the Mormon Mommy Mafia, the actual Mafia, the ‘Catlicks’, the Italians, the Irish, a Latino guy, a couple of Jewish ladies, and Chuck Muth – who brought along Paula Abdul as the tie-breaker vote – met secretly at the M Resort to guarantee that the new Justice of the Peace, Department 13 seat in Las Vegas would go to a Republican!
They were all nekked to ensure that no one was recording anything; they were all drinking Brandy and smoking cigars, and you haven’t really lived until you’ve seen a Mormon Mommy naked and sipping a brandy and smoking a cigar!
They hatched an evil plot to distract potential Dem judicial candidates for the two week filing period by flattening their tires, outright lying and bullying, threats, intimidation, and giving them all delicious cups of non-caffeinated cocoa with sleeping pills mixed in that magically wore off just minutes after judicial filing closed!
It worked too! All five candidates for Las Vegas JP-13 are Republicans and its all Paula Abdul’s fault!
Not!
Readers have been asking about this since filing closed and though I get my fair share of nutcases, weirdos, psychos, and knuckleheads asking things here; I wanted to state definitively for all of the many, many normal people readers who have wondered, that no, there is/was no conspiracy here; it just happened!
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I’ve narrowed the five down to two solid choices: Those who filed are Suzan Baucum, Frank Coumou, James Leslie Gubler, Jonathan Schulman, & Richard Scow.
I’m automatically flushing Coumou because it’s just really creeping the entire city out that another husband and wife team are running–like the hyper-creepy phony liars, John and Gloria Bonaventura,–Lucinda Coumou, running for DC-28, kind of impressed me the other day when I met her, so that means I have to flush Frank; bye Frank.
Sidebar: Note to all of you in every elective office: Stop doing this husband and wife crap; we really, really hate it and it looks like you’re hedging your bets and are piling-on on us. Plus, it’s just plain icky!
Gubler gives me the heebie-jeebies for no particular reason and I can’t vote for a guy whose middle name is ‘Leslie’—a transgendered name? A Leslie Howard fan? A Sheila Leslie fan?—that’s too many questions for me, so bye-bye James.
Jonathan Schulman I have never met, much less ever seen anywhere and I’m everywhere. I also couldn’t find a website; so good-bye ‘Schuly’man the Magnificent!
Truth be told, I narrowed this race down immediately when two particular people filed: Suzan Baucum and Richard Scow—the other three never had a snowball’s chance with me.
That’s how most of us navigate judicial races and other offices we’re not too familiar with. I was at an event for another judicial candidate and one of our Dem royalty workhorses who owns her own small business in NLV, put it the most succinctly on how we do our choosing:
‘Michael, it’s just a feeling; I either like them or I don’t.’
Bingo! I’ve be struggling how to write about how we politically process what we don’t much know about, and she said it the best. Yes, it’s irrational, maybe a bit irresponsible; it’s emotional and visceral—as well as visual—if you look like crap, generally, we’re going to flush you—but it is what it is. I’m a reasonably informed person, but that’s how I do it sometimes too!
…and I just likeSuzan Baucum for a variety of reasons!
I first met her some years back during lunch as she approached our table to say hello to my guest. When seeing her coming I thought: CIA agent, Humanities professor at UCLA, or runway model in Milan.
Then I snapped out of it realizing that I was at the Courthouse Grille; not known as a hangout for spies, professors, or models.
My second thought was: very competent attorney.
Then in 2008, she threw her hat into the ring for the DC-25 race against Susan Scann, Anthony Perino, and who turned out to be a mega-powerhouse and eventual general winner, Kathleen Delaney—Baucum pulled 3rd place with 18,000 votes—a race she should never have entered—her advice then was exceptionally poor because three women do not generally split; voters generally favor only one female far more. There were other more achievable seats for her, but she stuck it out in DC-25.
I was a Scann Man then—still am this year too…but Scann is running for a different seat this cycle.
…and Suzan ran a really, really bad race in 2008. You folks who are currently running really, really bad races—and there’s still a lot of you—should pull her aside and ask her when the light bulb over her head went off for her.
Her 2010 race is one of the state’s very best efforts–I would rank her in the top 1% of any race in either party this cycle. She ‘gets’ it, she’s enjoying it, she’s working rooms like an old pro; she is so comfortable in her own skin and with public life now this year and that wasn’t there in 2008…at all! Yet another of Nevada’s 8ft tall candidates–she from the female division and not the only 8-ft. tall woman I will be supporting either!–Suzan Baucum is everything we’d want in a person, a candidate, and a judge!
http://www.suzanbaucum.com/home.php
In 2008, I think Gray & Associates told her to just show up and stand there like a statue, because that’s exactly what she did! Think Ron Israel earlier this year, but in a Chanel suit and pumps! She would zero in on a friend or friendly face, rush over there, and just kind of stand there.
Not this year! No ma’am; she’s changed everything and will easily cruise out of her primary being the only female in the race and enjoying very strong Democratic crossover support too! She filed first and all Dems who may have considered filing for this seat begged off–that is very high compliment and professional and political deference–but it also left a vacuum that four other Republicans stepped into.
I’ve not yet seen her act as a pro tempore judge–both party’s lawyers tell me she is performing very well and has earned respect of colleagues–but I will before November; she’s everywhere I go, she invited me to a soiree with her old Western High School buddies and I’ve met her kids and her husband Tod—who’s got a Burt Reynolds, Smokey and the Bandit vibe happening—and who all are in this together for Mom and wife! He’s very entertaining to observe as he is one of the many spouses out there who really hates politics—he’s a big, burly, beefy, Trades guy—but who is always there for her fixing signs, hanging banners, hauling in trays of sandwiches…a very supportive spouse/partner is a very necessary component of political life.
I’ll be doing a spouse piece soon and I promise all that I will be very nice about them!
Suzan keeps promising me a lunch date and I’d like that because the really cool thingabout Suzan Baucum is that she is so broad, knowledgeable, and comfy, that she can talk about any subject really—chortle at herself—and is now really enjoying the insanity and absurdity that is very often political life.
I really do enjoy talking with her! Her gift is that she makes everyonefeel comfortable around her. She’s developed a politcal gravitational pull that just like the Sun and Jupiter, draws you in. You can actually see this at events as not only politicos beat a path to her to say ‘hello’, but regular people voters do too!–and if they don’t, she beats a path to them and introduces herself!
I know I’m a broken record on this, but I can’t tell you just how important that ability is to developing yourpolitical persona–again, you can’t ever say ‘hello’ to enough people in political life! When you can do that comfortably, you’ve just earned a vote that you’ll keep!
So of course, I will with great enthusiasm, be touching the screen this primary (and in November!) for Republican Suzan Baucum, and you should too!
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Richard Scow is a little bit stiff—I suppose that’s like being ‘sort of’ pregnant—OK, he makes Frankenstein look like Richard Simmons!
This is his first time out and he has absolutely no idea of how he’s perceived out on the hustings and often just kind of stands there like a statue–the statue thing is a recurring theme with the newbies and some oldbies too! He’s completely unaware of his public persona and no one seems to be assisting him.
I’m serious, noneof those knuckleheads in the county or state GOP have any idea the political platinum gift Richard Scow will one day be to their party! When you’re around him you know and feel that you are in the presence of a special kind of person and talent.
http://www.scow4judge.com/
My first impression of Richard was that I was speaking to a future Clark County District Attorney or Nevada Attorney General.
The guy just bleeds intelligence, competence, smarts, flawless good manners, and talent from every pore of his body but I think he’s running for the wrong office—and running too soon—he will be bored out of his gourd two weeks later should he win. I recently made a crack about his stalking me and 9 people came on asking me to take it easy on him!
Folks, you must be new readers here; I was kidding! I really like this guy and I am very, very impressed with him though not politically…yet—and I’m just trying to get him to relax and open up out there on the campaign trail! He always looks at me like I’ve completely lost my mind (I may have) and I don’t think even he realizes the great gifts he possesses…and folks; he really does have the ‘it’ both as a lawyer and a future politician.
He is most enjoyable to observe and contemplate his legal and political futures.
Trust me Mr Scow; I bat in the .960 percentile—you are a legal savant; I am a political savant—and I know potential political talent when I see it!
I just don’t think you’re broad or deep enough right now for possessing such an incredibly high level of intelligence and legal acumen. I want to see Richard Scow step into something completely outside of his Comfort Zone so that he will be not only a better attorney, but a better candidate who may one day give counsel to Republican presidents, perhaps?
Richard Scow is that talented folks!
Maybe to the US Attorney’s office? How about the Public Defender’s? Teaching at Boyd? Visiting lectures for those Paralegal students at UNLV? Some new committee; some new Justice/Civil Rights project for the Bar?
Or how about just a regular lunch date with Alzora Jackson? Ms Jackson is the very special, very competent Special Public Defender and is one of the state’s very best attorneys who should be a judge one day too:
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2006/Jul-03-Mon-2006/news/8262747.html
She is fantastic to watch at trial; I haven’t yet seen Richard as an Assistant District Attorney, but hope to very soon. They are so polar opposite that such lunch dates could do nothing but make Richard Scow–and maybe Alzora Jackson too–a better everything!
Then I want Richard to write about his luncheons with her and lecture about them too! Here’s the title:
“My luncheons with Alzora Jackson, because that weirdo Zahara guy told me to do it to step out of my Comfort Zone and that I would be on the New York Times best seller list for doing it too” By Richard Scow
Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?
I expect far more out of Richard Scow than running for a JP seat—not to denigrate that court at all—but if we want to see him reach the very heights of our legal community, he has to have some more meat on the bone and it has to be from other parts of the legal spectrum for him to become the very well-rounded legal & political superstar he has all of the ingredients to become today!
Keep a very sharp eye on this Richard Scow guy; he’s going places—just not this year!
(Mike Zahara writes and publishes the www.WatchdogWag.com blog on Nevada politics)
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