Former Assemblyman Brower may be among Nevada attorney nominees

Because U.S. Sen. John Ensign isn’t naming the three people he’s forwarded to the Justice Department as candidates for Nevada’s next U.S. attorney, there’s a lot of joking among attorneys that secretly they’re the one.

Before a hearing began in U.S. Magistrate Judge Lawrence Leavitt’s courtroom Friday, an assistant federal public defender was joking around with federal prosecutors saying he’s one of the contenders to be their next boss. Slim chance of that.

However, I do know the name of one of the three people Ensign proposed: former two-term Reno Assemblyman Greg Brower.

Brower, 43, now works in Washington, D.C., as general counsel for the Government Printing Office. He knows the state, he worked for the Justice Department, and his roots are in Las Vegas, where he graduated from Bonanza High.

I suspect, but can’t confirm, that acting U.S. Attorney Steve Myhre might be in the mix too.

No. 3 is still a mystery.

Ensign’s decision not to release the names makes no sense to me, especially because they probably will to leak out once background investigations begin. (Although when Ensign nominated Dan Bogden, a prosecutor in the Reno office, that was kept under wraps.)

Bogden was one of nine U.S. attorneys fired in December, and Myhre, his chief assistant, was appointed acting U.S. attorney for seven months.

The Washington Post has reported that, so far, the Bush administration has submitted just four nominations for U.S. attorney jobs to the Senate Judiciary Committee, even though there are nearly two dozen openings. Officials said it takes an average of 331 days to fill a U.S. attorney position, so many of the jobs aren’t expected to be filled until early next year.

With elections in November 2008, if Republicans lose control of the White House, new Republican U.S. attorneys might find themselves with jobs lasting less than a year.

While Bogden was a career prosecutor, Brower has had a wide range of civil and administrative legal experience, but he has not worked as a prosecutor. He graduated from the University of California in 1986 with a degree in political economy, spent two years on active duty as a lieutenant with the Navy and earned his law degree at George Washington University Law School in 1992. He practiced for two years with a firm in San Francisco before returning to Nevada.

Brower’s Nevada work experience links him to some GOP stalwarts. In Reno, he worked at Laxalt & Nomura; later he joined Jones Vargas and became a partner.

He was elected to the Assembly in 1998 and 2000 and was the Republican whip in the 2001 session. In the Review-Journal end-of-session poll that year, he was ranked as the second-best Assembly member, behind Assemblywoman Barbara Buckley and ahead of Joe Dini and Richard Perkins. Despite that, he was defeated for a third term in the 2002 Republican primary by Sharron Angle after his district was redrawn following reapportionment.

In 2003, Brower went to work for the Justice Department in Washington, so he’s not an unknown to those folks.

Brower declined to comment for this column, but in a recent profile in the National Law Journal, he said that when he was legislative counsel in the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys in the Justice Department, his job included implementing the Patriot Act. “I worked with 93 U.S. attorneys around the country to coordinate and communicate various policy issues that were pending in Congress.” Those issues included counterterrorism, corporate fraud and criminal sentencing.

After a year with the Justice Department, Brower was recruited to become the inspector general of the Government Printing Office, then headed by fellow Nevadan Bruce James. Brower became the general counsel for the office in October 2006.

Nevada Republican National Committeeman Joe Brown, an attorney with Jones Vargas who has known Brower for 10 years, said he knew Brower was being considered but didn’t know he was one of the finalists. “If he is in fact one of the three, I’m rooting for him. He was a good legislator, level headed and a quality person.”

The other two contenders will also have their advocates, but Brower certainly isn’t hurt by an endorsement like that from a prominent Republican.

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