Meet Steve Sisolak, the feared and revered Southern Nevada Democrat running for governor Often labeled by others, the Democratic governor nominee is now selling himself in Northern Nevada

James DeHaven | Reno Gazette-Journal

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He’s been called a bully and a bulldozer, but also a dealmaker and a moderate. For critics, he’s at once too conservative and too liberal — a union-busting budget hawk and a union-loving tax-and-spender.

It speaks to Steve Sisolak’s political staying power that he’s been so many things to so many people for so long.

The Democratic governor nominee — a single father to two adult daughters — started his political career in 1998, when he was elected to serve on the Nevada System of Higher Education’s Board of Regents.

More: Meet Republican Adam Laxalt, perhaps Nevada’s best- and worst-known governor candidate

Three subsequent stints on the Clark County Board of Commissioners saw him gain a reputation as a tenacious presence at public meetings, where he hasn't always shied away from loud, red-faced exchanges with a fellow commissioner, or even the county sheriff.

He's also known as a formidable campaign foe — a ferocious fundraiser with a big personality and no shortage of high-powered political allies, among them former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Yet Sisolak isn’t necessarily well-known outside of Southern Nevada, where he’s been a mainstay on the county commission since 2008.

In fact, for many Northern Nevadans, the 64-year-old ex-telemarketer might still be best known as the Las Vegas-based official who tried to move UNR’s medical school to UNLV. He now hopes to reposition himself as the only governor candidate who would continue outgoing Gov. Brian Sandoval’s legacy of boosting school spending and encouraging economic development.

Meanwhile, political opponents have taken the opportunity to introduce unfamiliar voters to “Shady Steve” — a California-style progressive with a penchant for pay-to-play politics. Campaign foes have also panned Sisolak’s expressed willingness to consider tax hikes to pay for promised teacher pay raises.

Few doubt the potential impact of such swipes in what’s expected to be a razor-thin race to replace Sandoval.

But even fewer outside observers seem willing to bet against Sisolak.

Many polls show the pro-choice, pro-pot, pro-growth Democrat is running a few points ahead of Republican governor nominee Adam Laxalt, though the contest remains in a statistical dead heat.

MORE: A political survey from the 90s has come back to haunt Sisolak — and his opponent knows it

If he can survive the TV onslaught, and reintroduce himself to Washoe County, political experts think Sisolak stands a real chance to become Nevada’s first Democratic governor in two decades.

“(Sisolak’s) biggest hurdle is, in a sense, that his image has been defined by negative ads,” said Eric Herzik, a UNR political science professor and a registered Republican. “If he had an image, it was because people remembered him as a member of the Board of Regents, when he was sometimes seen as an enemy of the north.

“He has a north-south problem.”

Policy positions

Sisolak, perhaps mindful of that perception, has spent plenty of time campaigning in Reno in recent weeks.

Northern Nevada has also figured prominently in his campaign ads, notably a 30-second spot that touts the thousands of jobs created at the sprawling Tahoe Reno Industrial Center.

The ad was released one day before Sisolak received an endorsement from the center’s co-owner — famed brothel owner and lifelong Republican Lance Gilman. Gilman’s support is expected to give Sisolak a crucial boost among the state’s influential business leaders.

Elsewhere on the airwaves, Sisolak has tried to turn November’s election into something a referendum on policy proposals — namely, education.

He’s played up the fact that Sandoval has refused to endorse Laxalt’s candidacy, positioning himself as the true torch-bearer of the popular governor’s multimillion-dollar education reforms. Sisolak wants to, among other things, redirect hotel room and marijuana tax revenues toward reducing class sizes and increasing teacher pay.

He’s also said he wants to adjust property tax caps to bring in more revenue for education, an idea Laxalt has blasted on the campaign trail. Sisolak backtracked on the idea in early October telling the Reno Gazette Journal that he saw no immediate need to alter the property tax cap formula, at least not without action from the state Legislature.

Sisolak, reached after an early October stop at a community health center in Reno, said he saw no need for Nevada to become a sanctuary state. Laxalt’s campaign has regularly accused Sisolak of supporting efforts that would prevent Nevada officials from cooperating with federal immigration authorities.

Laxalt, for his part, has also made schools the key plank in his campaign platform, though his plan puts a much greater emphasis on expanding school choice efforts. He’s been attacked over his pledge to repeal Nevada’s commerce tax, a key part of Sandoval’s sweeping, 2015 education reforms and a reliable source of school revenues.

Neither candidate has put forth a detailed blueprint to pay for their broad education policy proposals. Same goes for the pair’s dueling plans to improve Nevada’s health care system and continue statewide job growth.

That’s left plenty of room for the race to get much more personal.

Controversial votes

Minutes after learning he would face Sisolak in November, Laxalt’s campaign manager said in a statement that he was looking forward to facing “corrupt career politician Steve Sisolak.”

Within hours, the GOP nominee released his first general election attack ad, targeting a $16 million settlement Sisolak won in a 2005 eminent domain case filed against Clark County.

The suit saw Sisolak — a Milwaukee, Wisc. native who first moved to Las Vegas in the 1970s — successfully argue that county-imposed height limits near McCarran International Airport harmed the value of land he owned south of the Las Vegas Strip.

Four years later, after Sisolak was elected to oversee the county that helped make him a multimillionaire, he helped award a six-figure county contract to the attorney that secured his lucrative airport settlement. Critics have since decried the move as “pay-for-play” politics.

It was not the first time the longtime county leader has faced such an allegation.

From towing and cab companies to real estate developers and trash haulers, Sisolak has been no stranger to well-publicized controversies about his votes on matters that affected a campaign donor.

Two lesser-known examples include Sisolak’s 2015 support for a water and sewer facility agreement needed to start work on Coyote Springs, a massive, long-stalled residential community planned about 55 miles northeast of Las Vegas. Campaign finance filings show Sisolak received $10,000 in total campaign contributions from developers pushing the project in the weeks before and after the agreement was OK'd.

In 2016, records show Sisolak voted to move forward with a multimillion-dollar pedestrian bridge connecting the Bellagio and Paris hotels on the Strip. Little more than a month later, his campaign reported receiving a $10,000 donation from the Bellagio.

Sisolak said through a campaign spokesman that he's always put taxpayers' needs ahead of donors. He did not directly answer a question about the last time he had abstained from a vote that would have affected a donor.

"While Adam Laxalt has served his billionaire donors’ interests and barely skirted ethical lines in an unremarkable stint as attorney general, Steve Sisolak has experience, and proven success, in the tough business of actual governing — the work of building schools, putting more cops on the streets, and breaking ground on job-producing projects," said campaign spokesman Grigsby Crawford. "And Steve did it while setting a sterling example of what it means to be a responsible steward of Nevada’s taxpayers."

Sisolak's campaign did not make the candidate available for a telephone interview.

Sisolak has also attracted scrutiny for several county contracts awarded to Las Vegas Paving Corp., one of the biggest public works contractors in Southern Nevada.

In 2010, a federal judge reprimanded him and other commissioners for acting “corruptly” in handing a major road-widening job to the company.

The judge’s rebuke has not gone unnoticed by Laxalt’s campaign, who have used it in a pair of attack ads released since June.

One such spot accuses Sisolak of seeking “higher taxes for a slush fund to keep his campaign donors happy.” A similar ad cites a 2014 Las Vegas Review-Journal profile that characterized the commissioner as a “political bulldozer.” That same profile goes on to say the county leader “never met a tax he didn’t question” and credited him for taking on the county’s powerful firefighters union.

The piece paints a typically conflicted picture of a candidate who has regularly been labeled as both a maverick and a stalwart partisan, or else a successful businessman and a career politician.

Soon enough, it will be up to the voters to decide. They head to the polls for a general election scheduled on Nov. 6.

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