* Meet the new boss; same as the old boss.
* Clark County Republican Party Chairman Jesse Law was re-elected last night, 270-220. However, Johnny Bru, who withdrew from form the chairman’s race to run for vice-chairman, defeated Law’s hand-picked #2.
* Progress.
* Gadfly Eddie “Insert Goofy Nickname Here” Hamilton, threw his cowboy hat into the ring at the last minute. I set the over/under for how many votes he’d get at seven. Wasn’t off by much. He got…three.
* Poor Sigal Chattah. All dressed up and no place to go.
* The Nevada Republican National Committeewoman spent most of last night’s meeting cloistered with the Nevada GOP chairman in the hotel’s restaurant. Understandable. Because when she ventured into the meeting hall, nobody wanted to play with her…
* Rock & Roll indeed, baby.
* BTW, I hear The Mouth That Bored is fuming that I posted this photo on Twitter last night. So naturally, I’m running it again here. This woman should be nowhere near a leadership position in the GOP.
* Clark County Commissioner Tick Segerblom was tapped yesterday to replace ethics-challenged Commissioner Justin Jones as the body’s vice chair.
* Interesting dynamic: Commission Chairman Jim Gibson is perhaps the most moderate, reasonable member of the 7-Democrat commission while Segerblom is perhaps its most liberal.
* Interesting analysis by Eric Neugeboren today on how often Nevada legislators voted against their party majority on bills in the 2023 session.
* The two best party soldiers for Republicans were Assemblywoman Jill Dickman and Assemblyman Greg Hafen, who only broke ranks three times each.
* The two worst were Senate Minority Leader Heidi Gansert and termed-out Sen. Scott Hammond. Gansert broke ranks an astounding 47 times, while Hammond flipped his GOP colleagues the bird 39 times.
* In Hammond’s case, that includes flip-flopping on the Capital Improvement Projects bill that ended up killing Opportunity Scholarships and additional funding for charter schools.
* Also of interest, Sen. Carrie Buck wandered off the reservation 31 times. She and Gansert are considered the most vulnerable Republicans who will be on the ballot next year.
* And if the GOP loses just one of those seats, Dems will have a super-majority in the Senate for the 2025 session in which they’d be able to override dozens of Gov. Lombardo’s vetoes.
* Gansert and Buck did their re-election prospects no favors by siding so often with the Democrats. Conservative GOP voters won’t soon forget and many are unlikely to back them even in face of the super-minority threat.
* Republicans better hope they somehow get out of the super-minority in the Assembly next year. Speaking of which…
* I just finished up an interview with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich for an upcoming episode of his “Newt’s World” podcast.
* What an honor to be interviewed by the man who inspired me to get into politics full-time over 25 years ago. I’ll let everyone know when it goes live and get you the link.
* We talked about how I got involved as a volunteer in the early 1990s, my experience attending his Campaign Management College in 1996, how I ended up as Executive Director of the American Conservative Union and how running Citizen Outreach came about afterwards.
* We also talked about how Nevada Republicans blew it in 2015 by passing the largest tax hike in state history and how they’re about to commit a PR disaster by holding a competing presidential “caucus” next year in addition to the presidential primary.
* At the end, we talked about Newt’s new book, “March to the Majority,” co-authored by his senior strategist, Joe Gaylord. I *HIGHLY* recommend it.
*In fact, Nevada Assembly Republicans today are pretty much in the same spot as Newt in the House of Representatives before 1994.
* As such, I ordered and shipped copies to all 14 GOP members of the Assembly a few days ago and the Speaker agreed to do a one-hour Zoom call with the caucus members in the near future after they’ve had a chance to read it.
* Republicans CAN get out of the super-minority next year. And they CAN get out of the minority and back into the majority. But that’s probably gonna take a few election cycles.
* So we need to look at long term strategies, not just this election cycle. I only hope the next time they don’t blow it again like they did in ’15!
FAMOUS LAST WORDS
“In a legislative body, who you know will always exceed what you know. In other words, personal relationships will always be more important than policies or issues in a legislative environment. Knowing and being able to build a network of people will always triumph over knowing a great deal about policy or issues.” – Newt Gingrich, March to the Majority