(Fred Weinberg/The Penny Press) – The Nevada State Republican party is so dysfunctional that it appears to be willing to elect former Las Vegas City Councilman Mike McDonald Chairman.
McDonald’s campaign slogan should probably be “I’ve never been indicted.”
That’s true.
Here’s what is also true.
When now convicted real estate developer Don Davidson tried to bribe him, as captured on FBI wiretaps, he told his high school coach.
But not the police and the public.
Think about it. You are a sitting City Councilman. A prominent real estate developer calls you up and offers you a bribe. You obviously know it’s a bribe and it’s wrong. After all, your day job is as an officer for the Metropolitan Police Department. And even Metro would frown on this.
Do you cry foul and call the FBI? Do you arrest the guy who offered you a bribe? Do you call a press conference and tell the voters what just happened?
Nah.
But you do lawyer up in your successful effort not to get indicted.
And this is the clown that, 10 years later, wants to run the most dysfunctional Republican Party in the nation.
One hundred and seventy six words so far about Mike McDonald and we have not even delved into McDonald’s relationships with strip joint kings (now convicts) Mike Galardi and Rick Rizzolo. His boyhood friends.
So, if the guy has never been indicted, you have to wonder what he’s never been indicted for.
Let’s start with the testimony of Galardi in the G-Sting trial which convicted Dario Herrera. In the mid-90s, Galardi says he paid city councilman Michael McDonald $5,000 a month for a series of years for political influence. But, while Galardi entered into a plea deal, McDonald was not indicted.
In the case of Rizzolo, in a civil deposition where Rizzolo was being sued for his employees beating a customer nearly to death, McDonald took the Fifth at least five times. If you didn’t commit any crimes, why is it necessary to take the fifth?
As dysfunctional as the state Republican Party is, putting a clown like this in charge—despite his undeniable talents: after all, he’s never been indicted—is just begging for the kind of national ridicule which is usually reserved for Louisiana.
Here’s the way to protest this kind of nonsense.
Reregister as an independent.
If just 500 people do so in Northern Nevada, it would send a message so loud that maybe what’s left of the Republican Party would come to its sense.
After the Senate debacle in 2010, after the caucus debacle last month, after a decade or more of near complete incompetence, to elect a clown like McDonald the party chair says to the rest of the world that the Nevada GOP is officially a joke.
And, by the way, it is a joke you will see night after night on Leno and Letterman because many of us have the audio from those wiretaps in our files and they are a matter of public record having been entered as evidence in a public trial. Do you really think they will go away?
I’m sure McDonald has rehabilitated himself by now.
After all, he was never indicted.
But sometimes your track record is simply a disqualifier. As in this case.
If you want an effective party chair, then raise the damn money and hire one—someone who will actually do the work.
If you elect McDonald, expect to see a newly empowered group of independents.
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