Assemblywoman Peggy Pierce: Pro-Union, Anti-Nevada

(NN&V Staff) – In response to an article in today’s Las Vegas Review-Journal, Right Pride is blasting recently re-elected Assemblywoman Peggy Pierce for proposing a broad-based business tax while Nevada is still suffering from record unemployment, foreclosures and per capita bankruptcies.

Pierce has long been associated with the Culinary Union and the United Labor Agency of Nevada, where she currently serves as resources coordinator. The Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, which represents unions and other groups, has advocated for the business tax.

“Putting people back to work in Nevada should be the state legislature’s top priority next spring, as record unemployment has caused the decrease in revenues our state currently faces,” said Mark Ciavola, president of Right Pride – Nevada’s only organization representing conservative gays and their straight allies. “If Peggy Pierce believes that taxing those businesses surviving this economic crisis will put people back to work, she is sadly mistaken. A business tax will result in more job losses for Nevadans, both gay and straight.”

Right Pride has previously taken Senator Steven Horsford to task for misleading Nevadans on the size of the state’s budget deficit, and his plans to institute some form of a business tax in the next legislative session. Despite the denials of Horsford and others, Democrats in the legislature have yet to take a broad-based business tax off the table.

Mark Ciavola continued, “Peggy Pierce’s work experience is almost entirely labor union-based, and those values have been demonstrated in her votes for tax increases during good times and bad, and countless pro-union votes such as providing unemployment benefits to union workers while they are on strike. Gay and straight Nevadans can’t afford Peggy Pierce and other Democrats who have no business experience with which to draw on, and continue to push for harmful solutions to our state’s challenges.”