Last week in Nevada, women made history of the best and worst kinds.

On Friday, Gov. Brian Sandoval announced the appointment of state Sen. Becky Harris to chair the Gaming Control Board, the first woman ever to hold the top regulatory job in the state.

Days earlier, North Las Vegas Mayor John Lee engineered the ouster of respected City Manager Qiong Liu after she tried to fire his closest political crony from a job he never should have had.

This duality exists in a Good Old Boy State where women have made great strides but still are often not given their due or harassed. This is not just about the often-crass game of identity politics – both women are qualified and accomplished. Nor is it simply about a visionary governor who decided to make this pioneering act part of his legacy or a bloviating mayor whose embarrassing record long ago should have disqualified him from any political future.

This is a metaphor for Nevada, which still seems like a Third World backwater three and a half decades after I got here but occasionally finds ways to make me think real progress is nigh. Sandoval’s impressive, far-thinking tenure has been cause for boundless optimism; Lee’s imitation of a tinpot dictator has been reason for enduring pessimism.

Last week’s stories had very different endings. But both were fraught with the kind of insane politics only found in our home sweet Nevada.

It seems clear that Sandoval, once a gaming regulator himself, wanted to choose a woman to oversee an industry dominated by men. (To be fair, in our schizophrenic state, many women have risen to prominent positions in gaming, including the legendary Claudine Williams, Caesars’ Jan Jones and, of course, Elaine Wynn.)

It seems astonishing that only one woman – the indomitable Patty Becker – had ever been appointed to the control board, and in…1982! Is there anyone who would suggest that no woman before or since would have been qualified?

Harris fits the bill.

She has been a conscientious if not flashy lawmaker who has a law degree from Brigham Young and recently acquired a Master of Laws (LL.M.) in Gaming Law and Regulation from UNLV’s Boyd school. She essentially took over the GOP Senate Caucus during then-Majority Leader Michael Roberson’s quixotic bid for Congress in 2016.

When her predecessor as chairman, A.G. Burnett, stepped down a month ago, Harris became a natural choice. So what took so long?

The answer is that Roberson and some GOP donors were furious that Harris, whose seat already was in jeopardy, would put Republican attempts to recapture the Senate at risk. Yes, how dare she accept the opportunity of a lifetime – a historic posting that would allow her to take on important challenges, weigh substantive matters and put partisan considerations aside – when doing so would put her state Senate seat in play?

This is, alas, typical of how the GOP powers that be, save Sandoval, have run their show since the session ended, even concocting recall scams (that Harris, alas, embraced, if only tacitly) in an attempt to regain seats. There is little margin for error in that scheme, which Roberson & Co. believe is a work of genius but is in reality a dose of poison injected into an already toxic environment.

Even if both the remaining recalls qualify – they are caught up in court – and even if the Republicans won both, which is not likely but possible, if they then should lose Harris’s seat, it would be game over unless they held both Patty Farley’s seat (maybe) and Roberson’s (probably).

And so Team Roberson tried to pressure Harris into sticking around with at best a 50-50 shot at holding her seat – and in a Democratic wave year, probably less – instead of becoming the first female chairwoman of the control board. For Harris, absent the haranguing, it should have been a no brainer. And anyone who really cared about Becky Harris other than as a piece on a political chessboard would have encouraged her to leap at the opportunity.

“There is no better person to be appointed to the Gaming Control Board and her historic appointment as the first female chairwoman is befitting considering her resume, which is second to none,” Roberson shamelessly exaggerated after the announcement. Methinks he doth gush too much.

Although Harris survived the political pressure, Liu did not.

Liu made the mistake of being an accomplished professional and belatedly standing up to Lee in the cesspool of North Las Vegas. Despite the presence of Assistant City Manager Ryann Juden, a political hack who helped Lee get elected, Liu managed to help steer North Las Vegas out of a financial morass and professionalize a government entity once universally derided.

Her credentials are impeccable: She emigrated from Beijing about a quarter-century ago and has three degrees: a bachelor's in civil engineering, a master's in transportation economics and a Ph.D. in civil/systems engineering. Liu, who took the top job in 2014 after nine years in the city government, followed in the footsteps of other accomplished female managers of Nevada municipalities, including Virginia Valentine (also a civil engineer who led Las Vegas and Clark County), Betsy Fretwell (Las Vegas) and Sabra Newby (Reno).

Like any leader under a strong-manager (as opposed to a strong-mayor) form of local government, Liu had to navigate the politics while running the city. Inevitably, mayors will insist they are stronger than they actually are, and Lee is especially delusional, so Liu decided to accommodate the Juden situation as a concession to His Not So Honorable. (She even acknowledged as much in a memo, writing, “However, my failure to address (Juden’s) unacceptable performance in the past and allow him to remain in the position to this point was in deference to Mayor Lee.”

Juden grew increasingly emboldened, despite having no portfolio except Lee’s loyalty, and when it came down to him or Liu, this was no choice for the mayor. She fired Juden, as the city charter allows her to do, but Lee protected him, and a council without backbone or, apparently, working vocal chords, laid by.

This is not just a violation of the spirit of a strong-manager form of government, but also is evidence that the mayor and council members of North Las Vegas prize political fealty over qualified, professional staff. Juden has literally no qualifications to be an assistant city manager – he was worked in campaigns – yet no one will be surprised if he is elevated to Liu’s job as Lee flirts with a bid for Congress that will make Roberson’s 2016 attempt look competitive.

Lee’s history of inane comments and obvious prevarications make his comments to the Review-Journal that criticized Liu for thinking she is in a “leadership position” and asserted “this has nothing to do with me” unsurprising. He has wanted her out for some time, and both he and Juden have been known to make sexist comments. (Both like to call women by nicknames — Juden once repeatedly called a female news reporter “Tiger,” touched her hair, and when rebuked, refused to promise he would not do so again.)

How can they get away with what they did to Liu, not to mention the prostrate City Council? That is what many will ask, and should.

The Nevada Independent has made a public records request that, if the city actually obeys the law, will be quite revealing from what I have been told. I also hear Liu’s separation agreement has interesting tidbits — we will see that soon.

Against the backdrop of the #MeToo movement and in a state where sexual harassment in Carson City is now being exposed, Lee’s treatment of a professional woman at the expense of a male pal will not go unnoticed or, I hope, unpunished. And the abomination in North Las Vegas, where politics trumped right, makes the ascension of Becky Harris, where right trumped politics, that much more inspiring.

Disclosure: The Elaine P. Wynn and Family Foundation ($30,000) and Patricia Farley ($600) have donated to The Nevada Independent. You can view a full list of donors here.