Becker, Bilodeau fight for chance to take on Hammond in SD-18

In the Democratic primary for the Nevada Senate District 18 seat in northwest Clark County, Liz Becker, an environmental scientist, faces Ron Bilodeau, a telecommunications consultant, in the race to challenge incumbent Republican Scott Hammond, who is seeking his third four-year term.

Becker is running with the backing of the Democratic Senate caucus. Active as a political campaign volunteer, she decided she wanted to get more involved after the 2016 election. She went through the Emerge America program for aspiring Democratic women candidates and focused on the Senate district where she’s lived for 15 years. She decided to run a year ago left her job as the Southern Nevada Water Authority last July to focus on the election.

A native of South Carolina, her father was a college professor, her mother a guidance counselor, and she started out as a teacher as well. After one year of teaching middle school, however, “I just knew that that really wasn’t what I was meant to do. And I went to work at the water authority and conservation, which I loved,” she said.

Education and conservation are top concerns.

“For me, I believe that public dollars go to public schools, whether that be (Clark County School District) schools or charter schools, and I believe that charter schools should be nonprofit,” she said. “And I have these opinions because I worked in a charter school.”

“Everybody agrees that we need to lower class sizes, but you can’t lower class sizes if you don’t have teachers in the pipeline,” she continued. “So we need to do a better job at recruiting teachers and paying them a living wage.”

She opposes school vouchers because private schools “cost too much more,” and she backs teachers unions, though not not everything .

Education aside, the coronavirus crisis “is the No. 1 priority for everyone.” She backs the emergency actions Gov. Steve Sisolak has taken, such as ordering schools and businesses closed, as well as evidence-based decisions to relax restrictions or reopen the state.

“This is not a political issue, it’s a healthcare safety issue,” she said. “People who do infectious disease control, this is their job. They know what you need to do when a novel virus hits and nobody has immunity.”

Bilodeau consults in the electric and broadband industries after working in telecommunications and then in operations management for NV Energy. He retired last year. He has lived in the same house for 25 years, has coached and officiated youth sports, worked on veterans issues, and as a church volunteer. He is a board member of the YMCA of Southern Nevada.

“The community’s been really good to me. I believe it’s a requirement to give back to the community since they’ve given so much to me and my family,” he said.

Like Becker, Bilodeau sees that the district’s challenges now “are not the same challenges today as they were a month ago.”

“Originally my focuses were water sustainability, housing for the homeless, the educational challenges that we face and care for the elderly, and veterans and those in the margin of society,” he said.

On specific matters of policy, he demurs slightly, saying that the “responsibility of a representative is not to forward my own positions or insert my own bias into the process. It’s to understand the issues, understand what the issues are important to my community and to surround myself with experts and understand those issues better than I do.”

The challenge now, as the state’s response to COVID-19 nears a new phase, is preparing for “how all this spins out.” That includes “getting people in a position where they can interact with each other and not be afraid of each other right now when one of the biggest challenges is everybody’s afraid of everybody.”

He cites a strong religious faith and practice and says: “I believe that hope and faith overcomes fear and prejudice and that’s kind of what I’m running on.”

Contact Capital Bureau reporter Bill Dentzer at bdentzer@reviewjournal.com. Follow @DentzerNews on Twitter.