Politics

Over at the offices of the Independent American Party on Rock Boulevard in Sparks, Janine Hansen seemed a bit dubious about the recall effort.

“We mailed out 500 petitions from here,” she said. “But I’m not committing big resources to it. The odds are extremely difficult.”

Collecting 120,000 signatures in three months amounts to getting some 2,000 per day. Even a huge volunteer force like army of matrimony defenders who worked to get the Protection of Marriage question on the ballot averaged about 121 signatures per day, Hansen said.

Getting 2,000 per day would be nearly impossible “without a lot of money or barring some revelation to make people really angry at the governor,” she said.

Angry doesn’t even begin to describe how Hansen and others in the Independent American Party feel about the governor’s role in the recent legislative session.

“He trashed the constitution by taking the legislature to the Supreme Court!” Hansen said. “He violated the faith of the people who voted to put the two-thirds majority vote [to raise taxes] in place.”

Even if it’s not successful, the ability to engage in an act like collecting signatures for a gubernatorial recall is a “good accountability measure,” Hansen said.

Hansen is more hopeful about the party’s plans to do a referendum on repealing the new taxes and starting an initiative drive to prohibit state and local government employees from serving in the legislature.

“These legislators don’t represent the people, but their own self-interests,” Hansen said in a press release. “Foxes get out of the hen house.”

Of Nevada’s 21 senators and 42 assemblymen, Hansen can list about 23 who work in government jobs or who have government employees in their households.

Still, you’ve got to wonder. If government employees are kept from holding elected offices, perhaps these roles would be filled with representatives of Nevada’s business community—a group that obviously can be trusted to make decisions selflessly for the betterment of Nevada’s children and families. Right?