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At a few minutes past 10 a.m. on April 30 \u2013 a sunny Spring Saturday \u2013 the 2022 Nevada State Republican Party Convention was gaveled to order in a second-floor meeting room of the Palace Station Hotel in downtown Las Vegas, and Nevada Republican State Party Chairman Michael J. McDonald rose to offer his scheduled greeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then things got odd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mr. McDonald, a former Las Vegas-Clark County Metropolitan police officer, dispensed with the normal pep talk. Instead, he declared he\u2019d been accused of \u201caccepting a $250,000 bribe\u201d to see to it that current Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo \u201cgets this party\u2019s endorsement\u201d for the office of governor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mr. McDonald denied that allegation, which he said came from someone he had once considered a friend (but whom he declined to name.) He then said that if his accuser had evidence of such an impropriety, he should \u201cbring it,\u201d apparently to Mr. MacDonald\u2019s home,\u201d and that \u201cone of us will leave in a body bag.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This was a public event, attended by more than 400 people. Members of the Press were credentialed; there was a section of seats set aside for the Press at the back of the room. Yet I have been puzzled, over the past two weeks, to see no prominent press coverage of this rather dramatic announcement \u2013 nor of the quite surprising series of endorsements that came out of that convention, some of them in direct contravention of the evident wishes of party leaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am not challenging Mr. MacDonald\u2019s denial that he received a large personal \u201cbribe.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Such denials carry several risks, however. First, they draw attention to an accusation that few in the room (including me) had likely previously heard of. Secondly, they invite reporters of even normal curiosity to ask the deny-er \u201cWho made that accusation?\u201d and then \u2013 far more importantly \u2013 to focus in on the very SPECIFICITY of that denial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOK, Michael, taking it as a given that you didn\u2019t ACCEPT such a bribe, has anyone OFFERED you any payment in search of that outcome?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Possibly followed up with \u201cSheriff Lombardo certainly has surfaced with surprising rapidity in recent weeks as the apparent favorite in this race \u2013 especially for a guy not generally known up till now as a great Trump-style MAGA Republican, anxious for everyone to own an assault rifle with 30-round magazines and for a massive crackdown and deportation of illegal aliens. That only happens if someone\u2019s behind such a suddenly ascendant candidate to the tune of the odd million dollars. . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“So, leaving aside any talk of personal BRIBES, have any amounts of money in that range been offered to the state Republican Party, or found their way into the coffers of the state Republican Party, in hopes of, um . . . greasing the wheels to help Mr. Lombardo find his way to your party\u2019s nomination?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don\u2019t know the answer. But since the chairman brought the subject up so dramatically, shouldn\u2019t someone ask?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n The office of Clark County Sheriff is supposedly non-partisan. Less than a year ago, it\u2019s unlikely most Nevadans even knew Sheriff Joe Lombardo was a Republican. He certainly was not known for his activism in Republican Party circles. If there was any general consensus about Joe Lombardo, it was that there was something very odd \u2013 perhaps even creepy \u2013 about his nervous \u201cNo questions\u201d press conferences following the mass shootings at a music festival adjoining the Mandalay Bay Hotel along the Las Vegas Strip on Oct. 1, 2017, when \u201clone shooter\u201d Stephen Paddock is asserted to have killed 60 festival-goers and wounded 411 \u2013 during which time both the casino\u2019s unarmed rent-a-cops and Metro\u2019s finest somehow failed to locate and bust into the shooter\u2019s 32nd-floor hotel suite for, like . . . hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The reluctance to make early public disclosure of all hotel and hallway surveillance footage, the curious development that no maid had apparently entered Paddock\u2019s room for many days (simply because he left a \u201cDo Not Disturb\u201d sign hanging on his door), Sheriff Lombardo\u2019s rather embarrassing perceived need to \u201cupdate\u201d (which is to say, \u201cchange\u201d) the official time line of events . . . even later questions about what happened to funds raised supposedly to help survivors and victims\u2019 families . . . did not make Sheriff Lombardo the Hero of the Hour in the public perception.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s face it: The Las Vegas economy is dominated by the giant hotel-casinos. Clark County sheriffs may wear uniforms, but they\u2019re more political office-holders than \u201ccops,\u201d and they\u2019re generally understood to do the casinos\u2019 bidding (allowing casino security to \u201cback room\u201d advantage card players; \u201cfailing to notice\u201d the droves of illegal aliens working at these properties) \u2013 many being rewarded with high-paid \u201csecurity\u201d jobs by these same big corporations after they retire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet today, less than five years later, Joe \u201cNo Questions\u201d Lombardo is widely \u2013 and almost overnight \u2013 considered the front-runner for the Republican nomination to challenge enormously unpopular Democrat Governor (and former Clark County Commissioner) Steve Sisolak, the guy who allowed thousands of Nevadans to die on ventilators under the deadly \u201cCDC Protocols\u201d after he (Sisolak) banned Nevada physicians from using cheap, effective therapeutics including Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n (No, no one knows where he got statutory or constitutional authority to ban those drugs. He just did. Then Sisolak was caught buying them up and hoarding them in case they might be needed in the prisons. My personal presumption is that Tinkerbelle could defeat Steve Sisolak next November. . . . even if she comes out as a tranny.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why is \u201cNo Questions\u201d Lombardo suddenly leading in these alleged \u201cpolls\u201d? Because someone has thrown a huge chunk of money into his campaign, obviously. Who? Anyone who\u2019s covered Nevada politics for as much as a couple of years would have to be playing dumb to fail to name the two most obvious suspects \u2013 the owners of Las Vegas\u2019 major hotel-casinos (the state\u2019s biggest industry), and\/or the powerful Culinary Union, which represents many, many of those hotel-casinos\u2019 employees, an arrangement which curiously ends up being more advantageous for the union\u2019s bosses than for their menial-level rank and file.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why? Leave aside for the moment the suspicion that Joe Lombardo \u201ccarried the casinos\u2019 water\u201d to keep the \u201cnarrative\u201d of the 2017 mass shooting under control. Long before that, for decades, these interests have tried to arrange things so someone they can trust to do their bidding \u2013 to not upset the apple cart when it comes to the many low-wage illegal aliens they employ to keep their room rates down, for instance \u2013 occupies BOTH the Democrat and Republican ballots for governor. (Tax-hiking Brian Sandoval was a “Republican”? Hoo-hah!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n (A kind of a \u201cCan\u2019t Lose\u201d proposition. What the sports books call \u201ca middle\u201d \u2013 the kind of situation that can arise if \u2013 presuming Dallas beats Denver by exactly 10 points \u2013 the house gets to keep ALL BETS.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Note what Mr. MacDonald did NOT deny. Have large sums of money flowed to the Nevada Republican Party (quite legally, for all I know) in an effort to help assure a primary victory for Sheriff Lombardo in the party’s June 14 primary? The chairman could have denied THAT. But he did not. Further, he could have declared that to PROVE the party was a pure as Caesar\u2019s wife, he was instructing the party\u2019s Endorsement Committee to THROW OPEN the convention\u2019s endorsement vote for governor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shouldn\u2019t he have taken a step like that, before he got around to asserting that anyone who questions him and the leaders of his party on the odd ascendancy of Joe Lombardo can expect to \u201cgo home in a body bag\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n But he did not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n THE COMMITTEE RECOMMENDED AN ENDORSEMENT VOTE FOR JOE LOMBARDO . . . ONLY<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead, a few hours later, many of the delegates received the party\u2019s official list of \u201cEndorsement Recommendations.\u201d (These were supposedly an attachment which could be accessed via an email we were supposed to have received \u201con our device.\u201d I was home checking my email at midnight the night before. No email, no attachments. I had to borrow a printout from a delegate from another county. A rather odd level of secrecy, I thought. How much would it have cost to print out a hundred copies and stack them at the back of the room, given that delegates had collectively shelled out more than $57,000 to attend?)<\/p>\n\n\n\n We were told these recommendations were based on months-long scrutiny of each candidate\u2019s adherence to the party platform (including “social media posts,” etc.), as well as a gauging of their \u201celectability\u201d based on financing, campaign staff. Etc. Significantly, the delegates were not told how those factor were WEIGHTED.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whereas the Endorsement Committee, chaired by former Nye County Chairman Joe Burdzinski, recommended endorsing TWO candidates for U.S. Senate (Sam Brown and Adam Laxalt), and no fewer than FOUR candidates for Lieutenant Governor (Tom Grady, Stavros Anthony, Dan Schwartz, and John Miller), the committee recommended that only ONE candidate receive the delegates\u2019 endorsement for governor, that being . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n . . . Joe Lombardo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Joe Lombardo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s nuts. Joe Lombardo now claims to be \u201cpro-Second Amendment.\u201d But it doesn\u2019t take much work to find articles from 2016 in which the head of the Nevada Firearms Coalition was criticizing Lombardo for his gun-control positions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n ( https:\/\/360newslasvegas.com\/sheriff-joe-lombardos-call-for-ban-on-high-capacity-gun-magazines-in-nevada-drawing-fire-from-gun-rights-group\/<\/a> ), . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n . . . calling for limits on the size of pistol and rifle magazines (for everyone but his Boys in Beige, of course) banning certain firearms, allowing his men to seize firearms without due process under \u201cred flag\u201d laws, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n More significantly, candidate Lombardo now claims to agree with the GOP platform on enforcing our Immigration laws. But as sheriff in 2019 he WITHDREW the Metropolitan Police Department\u2019s formal cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement\u2019s 287(g) program, in which officers run an arrested individual\u2019s information through the ICE database, then detaining illegal aliens for pickup by the federal immigration enforcers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (See: https:\/\/www.reviewjournal.com\/opinion\/opinion-columns\/victor-joecks\/victor-joecks-lombardo-duped-illegal-immigration-activists-2491069\/<\/a> . . . or . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n https:\/\/360newslasvegas.com\/ice-stands-by-illegal-alien-detainer-reports-regarding-sheriff-lombardo\/<\/a> . . . )<\/p>\n\n\n\n After a thousand hours of digging \u2013 over a period of MONTHS \u2013 former Nye County Chairman Joe Burdzinski\u2019s committee failed to find any of this stuff?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Furthermore, in seven years as Clark County Sheriff, Joe Lombardo has never launched or cooperated in a SINGLE known raid of the major hotels along the Las Vegas Strip, rounding up for deportation the thousands of illegal aliens employed there as maids and kitchen helpers \u2013 many of whom the Culinary Union has even registered to vote, whereupon the union brags about driving such illegals to \u201cearly voting stations\u201d in supermarket parking lots the week before election day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n (Busing illegals to the polls in Clark County? See:<\/p>\n\n\n\n https:\/\/lasvegassun.com\/news\/2016\/oct\/29\/unions-flex-muscle-in-nevadas-high-stakes-senate-r\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Illegal aliens pressured to register & vote in Las Vegas? See:<\/p>\n\n\n\n https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/?p=4562<\/a> )<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fortunately, convention delegates at Palace Station April 30 ignored not only the unlikely notion that Joe Lombardo believes in and would work to implement the Republican platform and agenda, but also the notion that such rivals as activist attorney Joey Gilbert, former U.S. Sen. Dean Heller, and North Las Vegas Mayor John Lee (NONE OF WHOM WERE RECOMMENDED FOR ENDORSEMENT BY THE OFFICIAL PARTY COMMITTEE) somehow would NOT. The delegates endorsed Joey Gilbert by a whopping two-to-one margin . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n . . . and REJECTED the recommendation they were spoon-fed by the Party apparatus, that they should endorse poseur Joe Lombardo and ONLY poseur Joe Lombardo. In the end, the delegates gave \u201cNo Questions\u201d Lombardo less than 40 percent support, at which point his dozens of young supporters, sporting brand new red-on-black Lombardo T-shirts, stood up and shuffled out of the room, never to be seen again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A \u2018GIMME\u2019 FOR RINO AMODEI, WHILE CHALLENGER DANNY TARKANIAN GETS STIFFED. WAS IT SOMETHING AMY SAID?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n But that wasn\u2019t the Endorsement Committee\u2019s only odd recommendation. In Northern Nevada, the committee recommended endorsing 11-year-incumbent Congressman Mark Amodei \u2013 despite the fact Amodei was the very first Republican Congressman to urge the impeachment of Donald Trump over the laughably bogus \u201cUkraine phone call\u201d allegations \u2013 while said committee completely ignored Second District MAGA challenger and elected GOP Douglas County Commissioner Danny Tarkanian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Tarkanian\u2019s wife, former Nevada Republican Party Chairwoman Amy Tarkanian, took the floor and explained she and her husband had received no email offering to let Tarkanian fill out a questionnaire; that they had never been invited to take part in an oral interview with Mr. Burdzinzki\u2019s official Endorsement Committee, that the endorsement committee had ignored her husband\u2019s candidacy entirely. (Mr. Tarkanian’s challenge was not obscure — the Tarkanian family are Nevada celebrities.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n She received no satisfaction. The delegates were offered no opportunity to endorse Mr. Tarkanian in the Second District Congressional race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I thought maybe Mr. Tarkanian was exaggerating when he says Amodei believes President Trump \u201cwas responsible\u201d for the riot started by the FBI agents provocateurs<\/em> (none of whom have been called before Nancy Pelosi\u2019s sham committee, let alone arrested or jailed) at the Capitol in Washington City on Jan. 6, AND that Amodei was the first House Republican to support the bogus Trump \u201cUkraine phone call\u201d impeachment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n But Tarkanian has audio to support the first assertion. And it takes only seconds to confirm Amodei\u2019s treachery as the FIRST Republican House member to embrace the ridiculously trumped-up \u201cUkraine phone call impeachment.\u201d (See, among others):<\/p>\n\n\n\n https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/mark-amodei-1st-house-republican-to-support-trump-impeachment-inquiry-2019-9?op=1<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Never having voted in Northern Nevada, I\u2019d just presumed Mark Amodei was a standard \u2013 if rather quiet \u2013 conservative GOP back-bencher. In fact, it turns out he\u2019s long been a supporter of \u201cDACA Amnesty,\u201d in which any illegal alien who can claim to have arrived here before age 35 would be granted a \u201cpath to citizenship.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Beyond that, on Nov. 15, 2019, Rob Lauer wrote at . . . : https:\/\/360newslasvegas.com\/nv-rep-mark-amodei-promoting-new-amnesty-program-for-illegal-aliens\/<\/a> . . . :<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNevada\u2019s sole Republican Congressman, Mark Amodei, voted with Nancy Pelosi on February 14, 2019 and against President Trump for a bill friendly to Cartels and human traffickers. According to Conservative Review \u2018Perhaps the worst aspect of this law is a section that will grant de facto amnesty to illegal immigrants. Section 224(a) prohibits the deportation of anyone who is sponsoring an \u201cunaccompanied\u201d minor illegal alien \u2013 or who says they might sponsor a UAC, or lives in a household with a UAC, or a household that potentially might sponsor a UAC.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n See Tarkanian\u2019s rundown on Amodei at : https:\/\/www.realmarkamodei.com\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n AMODEI VOTES FOR BIDEN\u2019S $40 BILLION \u2013 WITH A \u2018B\u2019 \u2013 IN UKRAINE KICKBACK PORK<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n But the last straw for me was when Mark Amodei, the ONLY REPUBLICAN remaining in Nevada\u2019s Congressional delegation (Thanks, Culinary Union!), voted on May 10 FOR the Democrats\u2019 corrupt $40 billion Ukraine \u201ckickback\u201d scheme, without our representatives even being given time to read it, let alone debate it:<\/p>\n\n\n\n (See the official tally, at: https:\/\/clerk.house.gov\/Votes\/2022145<\/a> .)<\/p>\n\n\n\n For 10 years, Republicans have been moaning \u201cOh, Nancy Pelosi didn\u2019t give anyone time to read ObamaCare.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And now this? When the Democrats\u2019 massive spending combined with Joe Biden\u2019s single-handed shutdown of the American energy industry have created a hyper-inflation that\u2019s leaving American families unable to afford both gasoline and food?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n