Gov. Steve Sisolak said he “underestimated” the passion of the public on firearms issues and is still studying how he might fulfill a campaign promise to ban assault rifles — an ill-defined category of weapons — as California lawmakers call for neighboring Nevada to ramp up its gun control.

— Indy Q&A: Sisolak on 2020, gun law changes and marijuana enforcement

How?

How can anyone “underestimate” the passion of the public surrounding firearms issues in this state? 

How is this possible? Has he been asleep for the past… how many decades? Five? Six? When did that left-wing nutcase, hippy-dippy ultraliberal governor California had in the 1960s — Ronald Reagan was his name, I think — sign the first modern gun control measure, the Mulford Act?

Surely Gov. Sisolak was awake when Question 1, which required background checks between unlicensed dealers, passed in 2016. Surely Gov. Sisolak was awake when his gubernatorial opponent, then-Attorney General Adam Laxalt, found a technicality to avoid implementing the ballot measure. Surely Gov. Sisolak was awake when his opponent ran on his success in finding that loophole — the only sign of intellectual vigor and success Adam Laxalt could and will ever summon — when he ran for office against… well… Gov. Sisolak. 

Surely.

The surprising part isn’t that nearly every rural sheriff is refusing to enforce Nevada’s gun control laws. The surprising part is that there is one rural sheriff in Nevada who thinks his job is law enforcement instead of being a one man common law-inspired fourth — no, wait, this is Nevada, so fifth — branch of government, co-equal with the governor and the Legislature. The Bundy family, after all, argued that their county sheriff’s jurisdiction supersedes all other jurisdictions during their standoff in Bunkerville. Since that happened in Clark County, surely former Clark County Commissioner Sisolak was awake for that. 

Don’t get me wrong, my heart is with the rural sheriffs who aren’t interested in enforcing gun control against an openly hostile population (as well as the urban sheriffs who aren’t interested in moonlighting for Immigration and Customs Enforcement). It’s also somewhat refreshing to see conservatives recognize that prosecutorial discretion is a legitimate issue for once. However, since people have been surprised by the contents of Nevada’s Constitution in the recent past, we should remind ourselves that, per Article 4, Section 32, each county sheriff’s office exists solely at the discretion of the Legislature. That, perhaps, might explain why rural Nevada’s sheriffs waited until after the session was over to openly defy the branch of the government that could put them out of a job.

Unfortunately for Gov. Sisolak, the entirely predictable passion of Nevada’s firearms owners isn’t the only thing he underestimated. 

Take, for example, the incestuous regulation of marijuana in this state. An early clue should have been when Deonne Contine, who wrote the initial regulations governing recreational marijuana, resigned from the Department of Taxation to run for Assembly and the marijuana industry responded by donating to her ultimately doomed campaign. Given that precedent, it should have come as less of a shock when it was revealed that now-former Deputy Executive Director Jorge Pupo wasn’t just friendly with the industry he was supposed to be regulating, he was practically having an affair.

Or take the parlous governance of the various industry boards and commissions. An early clue should have been when Patrick Gavin, former executive director for the Charter School Authority Board, resigned at the end of 2018 after lawmakers learned that the board was over three years behind in some of its work — an impressive accomplishment for a board formed in 2014. Education choice has been a key issue for Republicans throughout this decade and its successful implementation was one of Gov. Sandoval’s main triumphs. If even a high profile board implementing one of the defining policy initiatives of Gov. Sandoval’s career was mismanaged, what else was falling through the cracks? 

We certainly have some idea, now, don’t we?

Or take the entirely self-destructive leadership of every level of the Clark County School District. At the top, Superintendent Jesus Jara is, if you grade his latest evaluation like a test and divide his score by the four points possible in each category, a D+ superintendent, earning a B for vision and student success targets, a D for core values, and a failing grade (59.75 percent) for theory of action. That failing grade isn’t surprising given that his theory of action, if there is one, is to shoot first and videoconference about it later. 

That, however, is downright competent consensus-building communication compared to the Clark County Education Association’s leadership’s communication style. 

Before Gov. Sisolak was elected, the CCEA endorsed Sisolak over Chris Giunchigliani. Ordinarily, this would be a small piece of trivia — it might justify putting a tastefully sized CCEA logo on a walk card, perhaps, before it was swiftly forgotten. However, demonstrating the level of subtlety and tact that Nevada has grown to expect from Executive Director John Vellardita since the CCEA split from the Nevada State Education Association, the CCEA claimed that Chris Giunchigliani “protected perverts” and sex offenders.

Since then, Vellardita has continued a scorched earth campaign, burning through every ounce of goodwill that might yet exist for teachers in Clark County by threatening to strike, pushing the County Commission into passing a tax hike they wanted nothing to do with, and, most recently, imposing a dues hike against the 3 percent raise his organization’s chosen governor fought so hard to get out of the last session to fund a war chest that may or may not fund a ballot initiative if the next session doesn’t go their way. This all followed a bitter arbitration battle that led to a deal that was supposed to keep the peace between the CCEA and the school district for three years — a peace that didn’t even last for a school year. 

In other words, Clark County School District’s administrative leadership is constitutionally incapable of communicating clearly, and Clark County School District’s labor leadership is constitutionally incapable of arguing in good faith. One would think Gov. Sisolak wouldn’t have underestimated the institutional dysfunction in the school district of the very county he served as county commissioner before he made promises and started writing checks. 

What if, however, we’re the ones who are doing the underestimating? What if we, as Nevadans, are underestimating how much scrutiny we need to apply to governors?

All the problems listed above are problems that existed during Gov. Sandoval’s term. Many of the problems listed above existed well before that. Education in Clark County has always been a dumpster fire built on a radioactive wasteland. Managing the various boards that report directly to the governor has always been an exercise in herding Adderall-addicted cats. Rural Nevada has always been borderline-ungovernable (some, in fact, would argue that’s part of rural Nevada’s charm).

Additionally, Gov. Sandoval wrote billions of dollars in tax credits to electric car makers and NFL teams with less than a week of cumulative legislative oversight. Gov. Sandoval also passed the largest tax hike in Nevada’s history, along with a “sunset” provision attached to it to guarantee that the same Republicans who passed it in the first place would get a chance to posture against it four years later.

Gov. Sandoval should have been held to a level of scrutiny. Any level at all, really. 

Since he wasn’t, it’s Gov. Sisolak who’s going to have to receive eight years’ worth of deferred scrutiny, with interest. To be clear, he’s earned it. Nobody forced him to continue to accept an endorsement from a union that smeared his intraparty competition as a sex predator sympathizer. Nobody forced him to promise a pay raise to public sector employees while simultaneously promising no new taxes. Nobody forced him to continue to directly manage dozens of dysfunctional industry boards that were observed to be unmanageable during Gibbons’ and Guinn’s administrations. Nobody forced him to run on a platform of gun control in a state that, once you drive north of the Skye Canyon Park Drive off-ramp, largely thinks that it should be legal to privately own the very same nuclear weapons the federal government used to poison their grandparents in the 1950s so they can shoot back next time. 

He made those choices himself and he has to live with the consequences of them. 

We, on the other hand, also made our choices. We chose to ignore the Governor’s Mansion for eight years. We chose to treat a friendly smile and a square jaw as a license to govern. We underestimated the power of the governor in a state where the governor is the only branch of the state government with reliable business hours. 

Gov. Sisolak underestimated the public. We underestimated the office of the governor.

We all should know better.

David Colborne has been active in the Libertarian Party for two decades. During that time, he has blogged intermittently on his personal blog, as well as the Libertarian Party of Nevada blog, and ran for office twice as a Libertarian candidate. He serves on the Executive Committee for both his state and county Libertarian Party chapters. He is the father of two sons and an IT professional. You can follow him on Twitter @DavidColborne or email him at [email protected].