Columnist blames everyone for a term-limit message that’s not clear

I’m feeling disenfranchised, and I’m mad about it, so I’m looking for someone to blame.

Thought I’d start with Sig Rogich. After all, the Republican consultant was the driving force behind the term limits efforts in 1994 and 1996, yet didn’t make the ballot initiative clear about when the 12-year countdown was to begin. Did the countdown start in 1996, when voters approved it for the second time? Or did it start in the following election?

If anyone doesn’t think the language was confusing, listen to this absurdity: Rogich himself said he thought those elected in 1996 would be able to run for another term in 2008. Sadly for Rogich, and about 20 Nevada politicians, Secretary of State Ross Miller and Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto don’t agree.

They said the clock started Nov. 27, 1996, when votes were canvassed, so people elected in 1996 but not sworn in until after that date aren’t eligible to run this year. (Legislators were the exception because they become lawmakers as soon as they are elected. So for them, the countdown started in 1998, Masto and Miller say.)

However, instead of expressing their opinions in 2007, Miller and Masto, two second-generation Nevada politicians, followed the letter of the law and waited until 2008, after people filed for office.

The unintended consequences of Rogich’s sloppy effort is that his friend Clark County Commissioner Bruce Woodbury is poised to get booted from the ballot, if the Nevada Supreme Court rules in Miller’s and Masto’s favor.

Rogich can say he didn’t mean to, but the odds are the court will kick Woodbury off the ballot, along with Regents Thalia Dondero and Howard Rosenberg, and Clark County School Board members Ruth Johnson and Mary Beth Scow, as well as 15 others across the state.

Why couldn’t this have been resolved in 2007, when Miller first asked Masto for a legal opinion?

Miller insisted it wasn’t his job; it was the job of the candidates. I disagree.

Where is it written in stone that Miller or Masto couldn’t at least mention to some columnist, for instance, that they thought, except for legislators, anyone elected in 1996 was not eligible to run in 2008?

Woodbury said in my August 2007 column he was running for his last term because of term limits. In November 2007, Masto was telling Miller how to challenge term-limited candidates.

Now we’re in a situation where the Nevada Supreme Court must decide who is eligible. Early voting begins July 26 and voters don’t know whether their ballots are accurate. How unnecessary.

The candidates said they relied on their attorneys; many of whom said term limits gave candidates one more time to run. There were exceptions. Regents Dondero and Rosenberg were advised in 2005 by their legal counsel to seek an opinion, and they didn’t.

Because it looks like candidate choices are going to be drastically limited, I’m mad at everyone, including former Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa, who offered an unclear opinion in 1996 about when the ballot question took effect.

Miller and I went around and around, with him saying it wasn’t his responsibility to bring up the issue, it was the candidates’.

“If I’ve got to take my lumps for not publicizing this, I’ll do it,” Miller said. “But maybe the candidates had an obligation. They could have asked. They’re the ones who chose not to ask us for clarification. … Why didn’t they ask us? Probably because they didn’t want to run the risk we’d come to an answer they didn’t like.”

He insisted it wasn’t his job to research and inform those who might be term limited. I didn’t ask him to.

But raising the issue in a generic fashion in 2007 might have given us a better pool of candidates for those 20 jobs and saved some tax dollars.

Miller doesn’t even agree with term limits, but says it’s his job to enforce the election laws. It’s also his job to protect the election process and I don’t think that was done in this situation.

For now, I’m blaming everyone for this election mess. Rogich. Del Papa. Miller. Masto. The candidates. The attorneys who advised them they could run again.

Nevada voters probably will be disenfranchised. All because of a failure to communicate.

Jane Ann Morrison’s column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. E-mail her at Jane@reviewjournal.com or call (702) 383-0275.