Senate candidates hiding?

It’s not that Nevada’s Republican state Senate candidates can’t debate their opponents; it’s that they’re choosing not to debate.

I’ve covered state Senate Minority Leader Michael Roberson, R-Henderson, for years. He’s always answered my questions with vigor and has had no trouble with arguing the issues with me, often at length. He could do the same with his Democratic rival, prosecutor Teresa Lowry, if he wanted to.

I sat down this summer with Republican attorney Becky Harris, who’s running against state Sen. Justin Jones, D-Las Vegas. In an interview, she gave solid, direct answers to most of my questions and parried my follow-ups with aplomb. She could do the same in a televised debate with Jones. But her campaign is saying no.

I don’t know Patricia Farley, the GOP nominee running in the open Senate District 8 against Assemblywoman Marilyn Dondero Loop, D-Las Vegas, but I assume she’s fully capable of holding her own as well.

But the odds are, we won’t see any of these candidates face off before Election Day. And that’s too bad. Debating one’s opponent is part of the process of running for office, as routine as pounding lawn signs into yards or knocking on doors to introduce yourself to voters.

But this time around, the loquacious Roberson — who has enlivened many a Senate floor session with his rhetorical gifts since getting elected in 2010 — is suddenly silent.

And the two candidates he’s helping run for office are following his lead. So the voters who are not lucky enough to answer the door when their candidate comes knocking won’t ever hear them talk about issues in their own words.

And that’s too bad. Because I’d love to hear Roberson respond to Lowry’s charge in a recent mailer that his vote against a background check bill means he doesn’t mind if ex-felons and domestic abusers can quickly and easily buy guns with no official record.

I’d love to see Harris defend herself against charges that she was involved with writing a restrictive anti-abortion law in Utah. Harris’ campaign failed to make her available to answer that question, but she says in a mail piece that Jones is lying and that she “supports the historic Roe v. Wade decision” and that “she opposes criminalizing abortion.”

The Jones campaign points to Harris’ work as a law clerk during the 1991 Utah Legislature, when she was a student at Brigham Young University’s law school. That was the year the Utah Legislature approved a law that contained a loophole the ACLU claimed could result in criminalizing abortions. (The law was later amended.)

Of course a law-school student working as a clerk could not be held responsible for a law overseen by the Legislature’s lawyers and approved by lawmakers. But the Jones campaign counters that a 1990 paper Harris wrote in law school — in which she suggested the state was a better guarantor of the rights of the fetus than were parents — is proof she held anti-abortion views, at least back then.

Great topic for a debate, even in libertarian Nevada, where a pro-choice stance was enshrined by a voter referendum in state law. But no debate will ever be had.

Roberson, Harris and Farley are not the losers here; this strategy may even help them win. Lowry, Jones and Dondero Loop aren’t losing anything, either. They’re still sending mail and meeting (some of) the voters. And we in the press aren’t losing, either; we’re still covering the race.

The real losers are the voters who won’t get a chance to hear directly from the people who claim to want to represent them. Those voters need to carefully consider whether anybody — regardless of the office or the political party — who won’t debate is worthy of a vote.

Steve Sebelius is a Las Vegas Review-Journal political columnist who blogs at SlashPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter (@SteveSebelius) or reach him at 702-387-5276 or ssebelius@reviewjournal.com.