(Chuck Muth) – When Michael Corleone (“The Godfather”) took over his family’s business after his father, The Don, retired, he pushed out his lawyer step-brother, Tom Hagan.
“You’re not a wartime consigliere, Tom,” Michael explained. “Things could get rough with the move we’re making.”
Now, with the exception of the governor’s office, the single most-important move Republicans in Nevada need to make this election cycle is ousting race-hustling incumbent Democrat Attorney General Aaron “Hug a Thug” Ford.
And to do that successfully, things are gonna get rough. REAL rough.
There are two candidates vying for the Republican nomination to take out Ford in November…
- Sigal “Hang ‘em From a Crane” Chattah (disclaimer, a client), a constitutional conservative whose been successfully battling Ford and Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak in court for the last two years.
- Tish “The Squish” Black, a self-described “moderate” who’s funneled buckets of cash over the years to Sisolak, Harry Reid and Catherine Cortez Masto.
I met Tish a couple of times during her failed campaign for Clark County Commission in 2018. Nice lady. But that’s the problem…
She ain’t no wartime consigliere. She’s, um, squishy. Doesn’t make her a bad person. But it does make her a weak tea against AG Hug-a-Thug.
She’s also late to the dance.
While the rest of us have been fighting Sisolak and Ford’s COVID mandates and “emergency” orders, The Squish has been fighting to protect her family’s pot business. And by “pot,” I’m not talking about cookware, if you get my drift.
Nothing wrong with that, by the way. It’s legal. She has the right…to fight…to parrrrr-tay!
But don’t come parachuting in at the last minute claiming to be some knight in shining armor who’s gonna rescue us from the Dems’ war on freedom and constitutional liberties.
Sigal, by contrast, is a brass-knuckled street fighter. A fire-and-brimstone ball-buster. To paraphrase Rodney Dangerfield in the movie Back to School, she “don’t take sh*t from no one.”
Sigal sued and forced Ford/Sisolak to fully reopen our churches during the Sisolak Shutdown.
She sued and forced Ford/Sisolak to give senior citizens and other high-risk Nevadans the COVID shot before healthy government workers.
She sued Ford/Sisolak to protect a parent’s right to make their own decision on whether or not their kids should wear a face-diaper in school.
And she’s now representing the supporters of a pair of ballot initiative to require photo ID before voting and to repeal the 2021 law legalizing ballot trafficking and automatic vote-by-mail balloting.
Oh, and she’s doing, and has done, all of this pro bono (that’s lawyerese for “free”).
For the last two years Chattah has been Ford and Sisolak’s worst nightmare.
During that same period of time, The Squish has been busy in court trying to block competitors from getting licenses to open competing marijuana shops and fighting off a nasty lawsuit accusing her of “legal malpractice, breach of fiduciary duty and disgorgement of fees.”
I don’t know what that last one means, but it sure sounds pretty bad.
Bottom line in this GOP primary…
If Republicans are looking for a wartime consigliere who you can imagine putting a bloody horse’s head under Aaron Ford’s sheets in the middle of the night…that’s Sigal Chattah.
If you’re looking for someone who will gently tuck one of Mike Lindell’s MyPillows under Aaron Ford’s head before singing him to sleep with a nighttime lullaby…that’s Tisha Black.
I don’t know about you, but I’m with Sigal. It’s not personal. It’s strictly business. Capice?
About Saturday’s Cherry-Pickin’ Straw Poll
I’ve received a lot of angry emails from folks who are hacked off about the straw poll conducted at the Clark County GOP convention on Saturday which did NOT include the races for Governor and U.S. Senate.
The excuses I’ve heard simply don’t hold water.
The main one is that polling convention delegates on those races would be divisive in a competitive primary.
Sorry, that dog won’t hunt because the straw poll DID include the heated GOP primary races for Attorney General (Chattah vs. Black) and Treasurer (Fiore vs. Kess).
Cherry-picking which “divisive” races to include on the straw poll made no sense. Either include ALL the races or include NONE of them.
A second explanation I’ve heard is that party leaders were worried that the straw poll results would likely skew toward Sam Brown in the U.S. Senate race and Joey Gilbert in the gubernatorial race because supporters of those two campaigns showed up in large numbers.
Two things…
- So what? What that means is that the two campaigns are well-organized and have taken an active interest in the party. That’s a GOOD Why should they be penalized for participating in grassroots political action?
- This is why I’ve repeated over and over and over again that any pre-primary endorsement votes should be made by the party’s elected Central Committee members, who are actively involved day-in and day-out, and not at a convention where attendees maybe only show up once every two years.
It was an ill-advised decision not to allow convention delegates to weigh in on the guv and senate races, especially after paying their registration fee with the expectation that they’d get to vote in ALL the races in the straw poll. Ticked a lot of people off.
But if you think that was bad, just wait until the Nevada GOP tries to manage the “endorsement” vote at its own convention next month. These people could screw up a two-car funeral.
Selling the Cray-Cray
In the last Muth’s Truths I noted that some folks have written to me claiming that Republican gubernatorial candidate Joe Lombardo would be as bad leading Nevada as Democrat incumbent Gov. Steve Sisolak.
My response: “Go sell that crazy somewhere else.”
Nevertheless, one reader decided she was gonna try selling the cray-cray to me anyway…
“He (Lombardo) isn’t going to run against his GOOD friend Sisolak. His plan is to capture the Republican primary race, and then, back out, giving the election over to his GOOD friend, and Democrat, Sisolak.”
Yeah, right.
Joe Lombardo has spent the last nine months running for governor and beating up on Sisolak, as well as raising over $5 million dollars (including money raised via a separate Lombardo PAC), but if he wins the GOP primary he’s just gonna walk away from the race and hand the seat back to Sisolak on a silver platter.
Folks, if you want to believe insanity like this, have at it. It’s a free country. But don’t expect people who live in the real world to take you seriously.
FAMOUS LAST WORDS
“Unlike Steve Sisolak, I trust Nevadans to be responsible and to make the best health decisions for themselves. Even Gavin Newsom ended California’s mask mandate before Sisolak ended ours here in Nevada. When I’m in Carson City, I’ll never let Nevada trail behind California again.” – Republican gubernatorial candidate Joe Lombardo, 2/9/22
Mr. Muth is president of Citizen Outreach, publisher of Nevada News & Views and blogs at MuthsTruths.com