Congratulations to all the candidates who signed the Taxpayer Protection Pledge promising the voters of their districts that, if elected, they would oppose and vote against any and all efforts to increase taxes and won their GOP primaries on Tuesday. Some notable victories (taken from Secretary of State’s website this morning with 100% of precincts reporting):
Pledge signers Sen. Dean Heller and Rep. Joe Heck easily won their primaries and now move on to tough races against a pair of tax-and-spend liberals in November.
Pledge signer Danny Tarkanian won a squeaker in the 4th congressional district race over Nevada State Sen. Barbara Cegavske who, for some unexplained reason, signed the Pledge years ago when she ran for the state Legislature but refused to sign it this year as a congressional candidate.
Tarkanian also swamped Dan Schwartz (11%) who spent a fortune on television ads pummeling Tarkanian and who not only refused to sign the Pledge, but ran as a moderate on other issues, as well. Brilliant “strategery.”
HUGE victory in Assembly District 39, where Pledge-signer Jim Wheeler defeated incumbent non-Pledge signer Assemblyman Kelly Kite despite having a third GOP primary candidate in the race. That almost never happens. Usually the challengers split the anti-incumbent vote and the incumbent gets re-elected. But not in this case.
This is a particularly sweet victory since Kite not only refused to sign the Tax Pledge but voted for the $620 million tax hike in the last session and wouldn’t promise not to do it again next session. Mr. Wheeler not only signed the Pledge, but campaigned hard on the issue.
In Assembly District 35, Pledge signer Tom Blanchard (who also won the autographed Ted Nugent hunting rifle this weekend at our Conservative Leadership Conference!) defeated Adam Cegavske, a public employee who refused to sign the Pledge…just like his mom, Sen. Cegavske (see CD4 above).
Pledge signer Assemblyman Pete Livermore crushed his non-Pledge signer opponent in Assembly District 40 with more than 72% of the vote.
In Assembly District 15, Pledge signer Megan Heryet pulled off an easy victory over two non-Pledge signers, Benjamin Donlon and Marco Miller.
And in Assembly District 9, Pledge signer C. Kelly Hurst appears to have pulled out a 9-vote victory over fellow Pledge signer Victoria Delaguerra-Seaman.
Congratulations to all the Pledge signers and best of luck in the general!
BYE-BYE CHAMBER
Thanks to its endorsement this primary election of so many candidates, Democrat and Republican alike, who voted for that $620 million tax hike last year – which included jacking up the employee head tax on Nevada’s most successful employers, as well as a doubling of the business license fee – I quit the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce last week and saved myself the cost of renewing this year’s biz license that the Chamber’s candidates voted to hike…and a few extra bucks to boot.
