Classiest Politicians in America - Installment 10 - National Republican Campaign Committee

Kate Marshall, Nevada State Treasurer




Nevada is holding a special election next month to fill NV-2, the Congressional seat vacated when Representative Dean Heller (R) was appointed by Nevada governor Brian Sandoval to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Republican John Ensign, another GOP hard-core "family values" guy whose dedication to marriage and family proved somewhat chimerical.

Democrat Kate Marshall, the state treasurer, is running for the seat against Republican Mark Amodei.  District 2 has been staunchly Republican in the past, although Barack Obama came within a couple hundred votes of carrying the district in 2008.

Marshall has substantially out-raised Amodei in the money race, and the National Republican Campaign Committee has tried to help by airing the following ad in Nevada.  Compare the attractive Ms. Marshall above with the rather cronish Ms. Marshall in the ad.



Two Reno television stations have refused to air the GOP ad, contending that it is not factual in claiming that she supported a $500,000,000 tax increase on Nevada businesses to handle the deep hole Nevada is in by way of borrowing from the federal government for unemployment insurance payments.  The Las Vegas Sun exposed the lie contained in the ad here.

In a statement to the non-partisan political blog, The Hill, the NRCC did not defend the specific claim it made, but continued to attack Marshall. "The fact remains that during Kate Marshall's tenure as Nevada treasurer, the economy suffered the largest increase in unemployment and home foreclosure rates in the nation," said NRCC spokesman Tyler Houlton.

When a politician, or a political spokesperson, starts out a statement with "The fact remains, . . ."  you are best off simply priming yourself for mendacity, inanity or both.

So there you have it.  The state treasurer of Nevada gets collared by the national GOP for playing some significant part in the unemployment caused by the Bush Recession, and the collapse of the housing market caused by a Wall Street which the GOP still wants to unfetter from the salutary protections of Dodd-Frank.

This is the kind of advocacy that tries to pass for rational political discourse in the United States in 2011.