Carson City Update – May 26, 2019
I hope you all are having a safe and wonderful Memorial Day weekend and honoring those who sacrificed everything to protect our liberties.
You can be proud of the work we did last week. We took the fight directly to Democrats, putting them on the defensive and possibly upending their plans for the budget.
The capitol was buzzing on Monday when we announced we were launching a digital ad targeting Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro for her part in proposing a $30 million cut to the school safety budget.
Our ad was covered in television and news print reports around the state.
Cannizzaro, who represents a suburban district, will have to defend her seat next year after barely squeaking out a victory in 2016. She is going to have to explain her dangerous proposal to her a constituents starting now.
But Cannizzaro wasn’t our only target this week.
Gov. Sisolak is so desperate to appease his donors, he is forsaking our children’s safety to do it. That is why we did something the party has never done before. We called Nevadans in every corner of the state and patched them through to Sisolak’s office so that they could express their anger at his proposal to slash funding to protect students.
It was a massive success, and the Governor’s office admitted they are getting hundreds of calls on the matter.
Take a look at the Reno Gazette Journal’s coverage of our efforts here. The $30 million the Democrats have cut from the school safety budget make up $250 million of money they can now spend on liberal priorities. If they test the constitutional bounds of the 2/3 requirement to raise taxes and move forward with stopping a required-by-law decrease in the payroll tax, they will have another $100 million to spend as well.
What are they going to do with all the extra money? We should be seeing how they plan to spend the extra money this week.
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Protect Our Elections…
The next big priority for Democrats passed out of committee last week. A.B. 345, which will allow for automatic voter registration as well as same day voter registration, passed out of the Ways and Means Committee on Thursday after spontaneously placed on the calendar the night before.
Allowing people to register to vote on Election Day will leave our system vulnerable to fraud and threaten the integrity of our elections into question.
Can we trust our government, which has shown incompetence when it comes to running programs efficiently and effectively, to prevent people from registering multiple times? Or what about stopping out-of-staters from registering?
I don’t know about you, but I have zero trust in bureaucrats to protect our elections.
But even if one does believe government officials can be trusted with this crazy proposal, the cost is outrageous. Lyon County and Humboldt County each submitted a fiscal note of at least $400,000 for each county to implement automatic voter registration.
At a time when items such as our school safety budget are being cut, spending money on what is a mostly unnecessary program doesn’t make sense – the millions that this will cost are better spent on programs that will have to suffer cuts to pay for this otherwise.
We need to go all out and try to stop this legislation.
Please call and email Assembly members and urge them to protect our elections and vote NO on A.B. 345! After you’ve done so, ask five of your Republican friends and family to do the same!
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Bad News…
While the work I mentioned at the beginning of this update has been inspiring, I do have some disappointing news to report from Carson City this week.
A.B. 186, the bill I’ve repeatedly been updating you about that would allocate our electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, passed out of the Senate this week and is heading to the Governor’s desk.
You don’t need me explaining once again why this bill is terrible. We all want to protect our voice in the presidential election process.
Our last hope is for Gov. Sisolak to veto the bill. Please take a minute and call the Governor’s office at (775) 684-5670 and urge him to VETO A.B. 186!
And while you have his office on the phone, urge him to veto S.B. 179—a sweeping abortion bill—and A.B. 95, the water grab bill that could devastate rural Nevada by taking up to 75 percent of a domestic well owner’s supply.
If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to reach out. Email me at josh.skaggs@nevadagop.org, or call me at 515-512-0858 and I would be more than happy to help you out.
And as always, if there are any other urgent matters before my next update, I will be sure to let you know.
In the meantime, please forward this email to your fellow Nevada Republicans. It is crucial we keep people updated on what is going on in Carson City if we are going to ensure Republican voices are heard during the legislative session.
Thanks for all you do,
Josh Skaggs
Legislative Affairs Director
Nevada Republican Party