STEVE SEBELIUS: Farewell to a fearless crusader

Former Nevada state Sen. Joe Neal was always tilting at windmills.

Raising the gaming tax. Exploring municipal power. Abolishing the death penalty. Opposing tax breaks for wealthy casino owners who display fine art.

Oh, and often-unsuccessfully dodging those always diligent Nevada Highway Patrol troopers who work the lonely wide-open highways between Las Vegas and Carson City.

Neal, born and educated in Louisiana, came to Nevada and became a legend.

A Democrat, he was the first Black man elected to the Nevada state Senate in 1973, serving until 2003. He was a crusader for civil rights and absolutely without fear when it came to challenging the powers-that-be, whether it was the state’s largest and most powerful industry, running against an entrenched incumbent governor or even taking on his own political party.

Neal died on Dec. 31 after a long illness at the age of 85. Nevada’s regular everyday Joes lost a champion who never stopped advocating for what he thought was right.

In 1998, he challenged then-Las Vegas Mayor Jan Jones in the Democratic primary for governor. Jones won the primary but lost the general to popular Republican Kenny Guinn.

In 1999, he launched an ultimately unsuccessful initiative to raise the top tier of the state’s gaming tax — from 6.25 percent to 11.25 percent — to raise money for schools, reducing the car registration tax and boosting the salaries of those troopers he occasionally met on his leadfoot journeys to Carson City.

While other lawmakers called casinos the “goose that laid the golden egg,” Neal saw things differently. “The gaming industry’s only product is an empty pocket,” he once said.

That same year, gaming struck back, fielding a young lawyer against Neal in his bid for re-election. Neal won the primary, but by a scant six votes.

Neal was undeterred. In 2002, after no big-name Democrats stepped forward to challenge Guinn’s re-election, Neal did. Although he had been a longtime labor champion, unions backed Guinn.

Neal’s own party, in fact, failed to list his name in at least one of their news releases touting their slate of candidates that year. It may have been quotes such as this that prompted the snub: “We don’t have a Democratic Party as such in this state. We have a gaming party. To have a viable Democratic Party, you must have people who follow Roosevelt principles and candidates with policies that meet the needs of the people. The party may not support me, but I will seek its help.”

The party declined, claiming Neal was pro-Yucca Mountain. (He believed, as many in Nevada still do, that the state should negotiate with the federal government for benefits in exchange for accepting a nuclear waste repository.) They also were irked by his support of (registered Republican) Lynette Boggs in a race for Congress.

Guinn won the race going away, 68 percent to 22 percent.

Despite the lopsided result, Neal remained undeterred. He was back in Carson City the next year, defying type by opposing a property tax and suggesting — you guessed it — a gambling levy instead.

“We’re going after average Joe Citizen … and we’re just touching gaming ever so lightly,” he said. “There’s a tremendous cost to that (resident) population when we don’t reach into the coffers of gaming and extract what’s needed.”

Neal would often surprise people, including lobbyists. He’d lean back in the plush leather chairs of a hearing room and close his eyes during sometimes-boring testimony. More than one advocate assumed Neal had dozed off until the senator would lean forward and ask a detailed question, showing he had been listening the entire time.

Neal was also known as a master of the Senate’s rules and Mason’s Manual of Legislative Procedure, the thick volume that governs debate. Then-Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus lamented the loss of Neal’s encyclopedic knowledge in the sessions after his retirement.

In a radio interview in 2011, Neal said he took his cues from Article I, Section 2 of the Nevada Constitution, which says all political power resides with the people, and that government exists to protect, secure and benefit the people. As a result, he said, “The people were on my side.”

The people of Nevada lost a champion on the last day of a terrible year, one final tragedy before the clock struck midnight.

Joe Neal, Nevada will miss your fearlessness and your passion. Godspeed.

Contact Steve Sebelius at SSebelius@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0253. Follow @SteveSebelius on Twitter.