The incumbent in State Senate District 20, Michael Roberson, ran in 2010 as a fire-breathing conservative. In fact, he signed the Taxpayer Protection Pledge on Tax Day at a tea party rally!
He then sold out conservatives in the 2013 legislative session by breaking his Pledge and supporting the extension of the “sunsets” and proposing a massive $600 million-plus tax on our state’s mining industry.
Worse, Roberson went on to actively discourage, and outright oppose, conservative Republican candidates in primaries this year, as well as forbidding any of his hand-picked recruits from signing the Taxpayer Protection Pledge.
Now I know a lot of you believe in your soul of souls that any Republican is better than any Democrat. But in the immortal words of John Wayne to Bruce Dern in The Cowboys, “I can’t stand a liar.”
In the RJ’s Voter Guide on Sunday, Roberson started off by saying, “Excessive taxation is bad for our economy.” Yet he voted to extend the sunsets, tax the Internet, and continues to beat the drums for a mining tax hike.
Robo-Taxer went on to state that “As Senate Minority Leader, I have worked…to hold the line on tax increases.” But that’s patently untrue, as he voted to extend the sunsets, tax the Internet, and proposed that massive tax hike on mining.
Roberson then bragged that he “sponsored legislation to cut Nevada’s car registration fees,” which he described as “sky-high” on “working people.” But the truth is he voted to extend the “sunsets,” which includes a hike in those “sky-high” vehicle registration fees.
Roberson went on to claim that he “led the fight to pass legislation that cut payroll taxes for all Nevada businesses and eliminated the payroll tax for 75 percent of Nevada businesses.” But that’s not true either. Those changes were made within the governor’s budget. Roberson had nothing to do with it.
In other words, the guy is, and there’s just no polite way to put it in this case, a serial liar. And that includes the lies he told about his conservative GOP primary opponent back in the spring.
So if the Democrats had run a moderate candidate against him, I’d have been comfortable endorsing an honest “Blue Dog” Democrat over a lying sack of…er, suds any day of the week. But they didn’t. Instead they put up a woman, Teresa Lowry, who says “it’s time corporations in Nevada, who receive billions of dollars in earnings, begin to pay their share so our kids and families get the funding they deserve.”
Pure, unadulterated liberal pap.
So while there’s no way I can support the dishonesty represented by Roberson, there’s also no way I can support yet another ill-informed Democrat Bolshevik with no understanding of, let alone appreciation for, the revenue-producing, job-creating contributions businesses and entrepreneurs make in Nevada.
So my recommendation to conservatives in SD-20: Vote for None of the Above by refusing to vote for either Roberson or Lowry. This is still Roberson’s race to lose, but why participate in encouraging even more dishonesty in politics? Plus, you’ll sleep better at night!
