(Chuck Muth) – There’s a perception out there that Clark County Commissioner Steve Sisolak, now running for the Democrat Party’s nomination for Nevada governor, is a centrist.
“Republicans may be readying a conservative to be their 2018 gubernatorial nominee,” Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist Steve Sebelius wrote a couple weeks back, “but it looks like Democrats will have a moderate among their choices. On Thursday, Clark County Commission Chairman Steve Sisolak announced what had long been rumored: He intends to run for governor of Nevada.”
Indeed, Sisolak himself ran like the proverbial scalded dog from the liberal label in his announcement…
“I think people are more interested in moderate, centrist leadership. I’m not real liberal.”
And I guess compared to the rabid foaming-at-the-mouth anti-business lefties such as the Culinary Union and the Crazy Bernie Sanders fanatics, that’s true. Indeed, had Sisolak run against tax-hiking/ESA-killing/Medicaid-expanding RINO Gov. Brian Sandoval in 2014, he’d have gotten a pretty fair share of the GOP vote.
But Sisolak opted not to take on Sandoval’s pearly white teeth and perfectly coifed hair and instead opt to allow – and this is a hilarious – “None of the Above” to win the Democrats’ gubernatorial primary that year!
Now with Sandoval (thankfully!) term-limited out, Sisolak has decided to reach for the brass ring. But he won’t be running against a RINO next year – unless, miraculously, State Treasurer Dan Schwartz pulls a rabbit out of his hat and wins the GOP nomination. (Don’t bet the farm on it.)
No, the likely Republican candidate will be an actual, proven common sense fiscal conservative – Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt. And the differences between Laxalt and Sisolak will be as stark as night and day.
For example, Sisolak opposes Education Savings Accounts, the voucher-like program that would allow parents, rather than the government, choose which school their children attend.
Instead, he supports dumping even more money into the government’s “failure factories,” pledging on his website that “he will restore funding to at least pre-recession levels and prioritize class size reduction.”
Problem is, funding for Nevada’s public schools has already SKY-ROCKETED above pre-recession levels under Sandoval – with no sign whatsoever that it’s helped improve our worst-in-the-nation education system.
And study after study has shown so-called “class size reduction” in Nevada to be, at best, a miserable failure and complete waste of money. Indeed, the best, most cost-effective way to reduce class size in public schools is to give parents ESAs enabling many to send their kids to private schools instead.
Sisolak also supports collective bargaining for state employees, which would cause statewide the same cost-inflating headaches unionization of local government workers has.
And he’s all in with the propaganda campaign against repealing-and-replacing the disastrous ObamaCare program that’s in a death spiral nationwide. Indeed, he tweeted just this past week…
“Changes or a complete repeal of the ACA would devastate @UMCSN and cost county residents millions.”
Sisolak is talking about UMC (University Medical Center) – the only government-owned and operated hospital in Nevada that’s terminally operating in the red.
Indeed, Sisolak himself has been criticizing UMC’s fiscally incompetent management for years. So it’s not ObamaCare repeal that’s the problem. It’s UMC. It is and always has been a black hole for taxpayer dollars. Blaming its woes on ObamaCare repeal is nothing but political opportunism.
And if you suspect the commissioner’s true colors already bleed liberal blue, just wait until a hard-left primary challenger, such as fellow County Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani, enters the race. That’s when his “centrist” sheen will be blown to smithereens. He’s gonna move so far left even his dog won’t recognize him.
Sisolak hopes to run as Democrat Lite. It’ll be interesting to see if the Kool-Aid drinkers in the party will swallow it.
Mr. Muth is president of Citizen Outreach and publisher of Nevada News & Views
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