The Center for American Progress (CAP) is a liberal grassroots lobbying organization that, according to Wikipedia, “was created in 2003 as a left-leaning alternative to (conservative) think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute.”
Some additional background…
“The president and chief executive officer of CAP is Neera Tanden, who worked for the Obama and Clinton administrations and for Hillary Clinton’s campaigns. The first president and CEO was John Podesta, who has served as White House Chief of Staff to U.S. President Bill Clinton and as the chairman of the 2016 presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton. Podesta remained with the organization as chairman of the board until he joined the Obama White House staff in December 2013. Tom Daschle is the current chairman.”
So why am I telling you this?
Because CAP just released a report giving Nevada a “D” grade in “Election Security.” And I’m sure the fact that this is an election year and Nevada has a Republican secretary of state had no influence whatsoever in its findings.
Yeah, right. As the saying goes, consider the source.
In a response to the report, the Secretary of State’s office contested the organization’s conclusions, voicing “concerns about the accuracy of some of the information in the report as it relates to Nevada, as well as some of the assumptions made regarding which systems and methods are superior to others.”
So why am I telling you this?
Because I’m now reliably told that freshman Assemblyman Jim Marchant (R-Las Vegas) is telling people he plans on using this flawed report by this liberal advocacy organization as a reason to run against Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske in the upcoming June 12 GOP primary.
If true, that’s as dumb an idea as Nevada State Treasurer Dan Schwartz running against Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt in the GOP gubernatorial primary.
While vote fraud is real and election security a critical issue, Secretary Cegavske is not the problem.
The biggest problems are Nevada laws that tie the secretary of state’s hands in investigating vote fraud allegations and the refusal by the federal government to provide certain database information, particularly as it relates to illegal immigrants, to state election officials that would help root out the problem.
And in discussing these matters with Assemblyman Marchant a week ago, I came to realize he was not aware of much of this. Then I found out why. Because he’d never met with Secretary Cegavske to be briefed on the realities of situation and get answers to his questions “straight from the horse’s mouth,” so to speak.
So I arranged for a meeting with the three of us in an effort to clear up the misunderstandings.
Alas, the day before the meeting I received a text message from the assemblyman advising that he didn’t think the meeting was “a good use of our time” because “I know what she is going to say. I have already heard it. I don’t need to hear it again.”
Since he’d never met with or talked to Cegavske directly about these issues, I couldn’t help but be impressed with the freshman legislator’s mind-reading powers. It reminded me of that time when former President George W. Bush looked Russian President Vladimir Putin in the eye and “was able to get a sense of his soul.”
Epic.
For the life of me, I don’t understand this vendetta Assemblyman Marchant seems to have towards Secretary Cegavske, who has run her office in a professional, responsible, non-partisan manner – as she should. In addition, she has championed needed election reforms – such as photo ID – her entire political career in both the Legislature and as secretary of state.
She’s one of the “good guys.”
The idea of running against this conservative Republican in a GOP primary without so much as even talking to her first about issues you don’t fully understand would be yet another example of Republicans never blowing an opportunity to blow an opportunity. I hope the assemblyman reconsiders and backs away from this political cliff.
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