It’s no secret Republican U.S. Senate candidate Danny Tarkanian is an unabashed Donald Trump fanboy who has hitched his political fortunes to the president’s agenda.
When the first page of your campaign website enthuses, “In 2016 you voted to Make America Great Again. Help us continue the fight,” you’ve safely made your point in one of the year’s most watched elections.
Add to that vocal support from former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon and a December endorsement by Sebastian Gorka, and the son of late legendary UNLV basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian has done everything but prick his trigger finger and burn a saint’s picture to prove his loyalty to Trump.
But Tarkanian’s unwillingness to waver from the Trump talking points put him at rhetorical odds this past week with the gaming industry and a majority of Nevadans on the subject of the mothballed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. The candidate praised the inclusion of $120 million in the president’s $4.4 trillion fiscal year 2019 budget to restart the licensing process of the wildly unpopular waste dump located 90 miles outside Las Vegas.
Depending on your perspective, the move was either bold or boneheaded. The waste dump plan has long been considered a third rail in Nevada politics. Opposing Yucca Mountain is one issue on which both sides of the state’s congressional delegation have agreed.
For all his interest in gaining Trump’s favor, incumbent Sen. Dean Heller was careful to draw the line on the repository plan. “Despite Congress’ refusal to fund the Yucca Mountain project, the Administration is once again prioritizing it,” Heller said in a statement. “Whether it’s the threat that Yucca Mountain poses to the people of southern Nevada or its potentially catastrophic effect on our tourism economy, I’ve made it clear why Nevada does not want to turn into the nation’s nuclear waste dump.”
The funding proposal gave Tarkanian a chance to tout the repository idea as a potential economic boon and once again paint Heller as an establishment Republican out of touch with the home folks.
“DC Dean is showing his true colors again, playing politics when Nevada and our country needs true leadership,” Tarkanian said. “Dean Heller still refuses to support the Trump administration. With Yucca Mountain, Nevada has the opportunity to become a world leader in the reprocessing of nuclear fuel and eliminate 97 percent of our country’s nuclear waste. In pushing to revive the project, the Trump administration recognizes how important Yucca Mountain is to Nevada and America. Dean Heller should be ashamed of himself for standing against President Trump, a safer America, and a more prosperous future for Nevada.”
The trouble for Tarkanian is, the powerful American Gaming Association has been clear in expressing the industry’s opposition to the waste dump project. It’s bad for business and a potential nightmare for tourism.
“AGA opposes any effort to revive Yucca Mountain as a repository and will work with the many concerned citizens, small-business operators and members of Congress to ensure that radioactive waste is never stored anywhere near the world’s premier tourist, convention and entertainment destination,” AGA Vice President of Government Relations Chris Cylke said in a statement in the wake of Trump’s announcement.
“Yucca Mountain is located just 90 miles from Las Vegas, Nevada, which welcomed 42 million visitors last year. … Any problems with the transport of nuclear waste to the site, or issues with its storage there, would bring potentially devastating consequences to the local, state and national economies.”
And AGA President and CEO Geoff Freeman sent a letter last April to the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on the Environment and Economy denouncing the waste dump licensing plan, which has rattled back to life under the current administration.
The senate race is one of the most watched in the country and running to Heller’s right is a strategy meant to appeal to Nevada’s hard-core conservatives. Those are the folks most likely to leave the Barcalounger long enough to cast ballots in an off-year primary. Thanks to Heller’s occasional discomfort with Trump’s more audacious rhetoric, Tarkanian has successfully painted the incumbent as a flip-flopper and an unreliable soldier in the MAGA war.
It seemed to work well for a while. In the first Republican poll of the campaign season in late October, a survey done by the national firm, JMC Analytics, placed Tarkanian ahead of Heller, 44 percent to 38 percent with 17 percent undecided. With 85 percent of those surveyed supporting Trump and any candidate wearing a red cap, that was good news for Tarkanian.
Is the sand is shifting beneath Tarkanian’s feet? Although Heller’s fundraising has been unremarkable, he finished 2017 with approximately $4.6 million in cash on hand, according to opensecrets.org. That gives the incumbent more than enough to pound Tarkanian’s woeful business record and paint him as a perennial political also-ran.
There’s plenty of material to work with. Tarkanian was recently accused in a complaint by Heller campaign co-chair Collier Azare with the Federal Elections Commission of making an illegal $40,000 corporate contribution from a nonprofit he operates to his unsuccessful 2012 congressional campaign.
Tarkanian admits he had campaign expenses after the 2012 primary, but was owed money from his a limited liability company he controlled. He said he transferred funds from a nonprofit he also controls to his LLC, JAMD. The money then was sent to his personal account. (Although it’s illegal for LLCs and a 501(c)3 nonprofits to loan money to congressional campaigns, it’s business as usual for a candidate to loan money to his own campaign.)
Tarkanian’s troubles are currently looping in a Heller campaign advertisement. The spot has been stamped “Honest as Abe” by The Nevada Independent news website.
Consider a lack of cash on hand a recurring theme in Tarkanian’s campaign. He listed just $450,512 in the bank at the end of 2017. That’s not nearly enough to counterpunch with Heller’s media.
Tarkanian’s annual pay for operating his Tarkanian Basketball Academy nonprofit—is also being scrutinized after his pay increased to six-figure sums between 2014 and 2017. Taking a handsome salary increase while raising monthly fees at his charity basketball camp was bound to be noticed, and Heller’s people are crowing at the unforced turnover.
“Raising prices on families while giving yourself a six-figure salary. Who does that?” Heller campaign spokesman Keith Schipper asked in a story reported by The Hill. “Between using the charity to pay campaign bills and his personal mortgage, to increasing fees to apparently cover a huge salary, it is clear that the Tarkanian Basketball Academy is nothing more than a piggy bank for the failed politician.”
Tarkanian’s campaign manager, Judy Flynn, is also under scrutiny for personally benefiting from the basketball charity from 2011 to 2016.
Those brushfires aside, Tarkanian’s Trump allegiance is forcing Heller to more closely align himself with the president on several issues, including immigration. Nevada Democrats backing Democratic Congresswoman Jacky Rosen’s U.S. Senate candidacy are having a field day with it calling Heller a flip-flopper.
“Once again, Senator Heller is willing to sell out Nevada’s immigrant families because he is more concerned about preserving his own political career,” said a top Nevada Democratic Party spokesman. “Thousands of Nevadans are counting on Heller to do the right thing, but he keeps letting them down. This kind of spineless, self-serving behavior explains why Dean Heller will be voted out of office in 2018.”
Rosen’s camp adds that Heller’s ping-ponging position proves “he will turn his back on Dreamers and immigrant families anytime the political winds shift.”
In the short run, all that is good for Danny Tarkanian. But then the short run has never been his trouble.
Once a doggedly competitive basketball point guard who led winning UNLV basketball teams to national prominence, Tarkanian is nothing if not resilient. In his seventh political campaign in the state of Nevada, he has prevailed in several primaries but has never won a general election.
Most of the experienced members of Nevada’s political press wrote off Tarkanian a couple of campaigns ago, but his appeal to diehard conservative makes him a danger to Heller.
“The cashiering of Tarkanian booster Steve Bannon and Heller’s obsequiousness toward Trump to secure a de facto presidential endorsement have hurt Danny’s chances,” Nevada Independent publisher and longtime Nevada political journalist Jon Ralston said. “But he is nothing if not relentless and he knows how to appeal to the base. Tark may be like Monty Python’s Black Knight, but he is still fighting like its only a flesh wound.”
To hear Tarkanian tell it, those many cuts haven’t hurt a bit.
“The Establishment might not understand why an individual would stand up again and again,” Tarkanian explains on his campaign website, “but the people who have supported my candidacy do understand.”
What those with knowledge of Nevada politics have difficulty understanding is how a Trump true believer might prevail in November.
John L. Smith is a longtime Las Vegas journalist and author. Contact him at jlnevadasmith@gmail.com. On Twitter: @jlnevadasmith
