Steven Horsford, NOT Danny Tarkanian for Congress NV District 4
If you live on the north side of Las Vegas, or any of southern Nevada’s rural counties (aka Nevada Congressional District 4), you need to go out and vote for Steven Horsford… and I’ll tell you exactly why:
Steven Horsford Has Been There When the Community Needed Him:
I’ve seen it firsthand. I first met Steven Horsford a little over two years ago during the 2010 special session of the Nevada Legislature. There was a special session because of a massive shortage in Nevada’s budget due to lack of tourism dollars coming in during one of the worst recessions in American history.
Education still needed to be funded so our children could go to school, and the jobs of the future could be created in our college and university systems.
I traveled to Carson City with a group of students from UNLV, CSN and Nevada State College. Who do you suppose came to the table and met with us students to discuss Republican governor Jim Gibbons’ proposed massive cuts to education? That’s right, Steven Horsford met with us, answered questions, assured us he was against these draconian cuts and would do whatever it took to avoid them.
A month previous to that, he was the Democratic rebuttal to Governor Gibbon’s state of the state address where among other things he discussed the vital need for revenue reform in Nevada. Taking these positions and doing what it took to avoid massive cuts to vital programs took tremendous courage. He was doing what was right for Nevada, for our children, and for our future. Taking strong positions on state taxes is never popular, and now his opponents are exploiting his legislative record for their smear campaigns and television ads. Sad.
StevenHorsford has demonstrated the kind of leadership we need in government. He was successful in blocking the enormous cuts to education proposed by Republican leadership. We need leaders like that who have the courage to do the right thing, despite the political consequences.
Why He’s in Politics:
Steven is just a regular home grown guy from the west side of Las Vegas. He never planned on running for political office. He found the value of making a difference in the community by doing things like helping the Andre Agassi school become a reality, and helping to start and run the Culinary Academy, which has helped train and place thousands of locals in the service industry here in Las Vegas. That’s what I call being a “job creator.”
When long time senator Joe Neal retired from public office in 2004, Steven Horsford stepped forward and said he would serve because he deeply believed that government needs people who have struggled and know what it’s like to barely be able to pay the bills. “There are a lot of people in government who just don’t get it” Horsford explained. He nailed that one on the head.
Where Steven Horsford Stands on the Issues
I asked him what issues he was passionate about, and there where many. For Steven, education is the great equalizer. That’s how people improve their situations. With Nevada ranking at the bottom of every list in both K-12 and higher education, he fought in the state legislature to improve the situation that impacts so many Nevadans. That’s a big reason he’s running for Congress because there is much that can be done at the federal level to help Nevada’s education system.
Unlike Horsford, his opponent Danny Tarkanian does not see education as a right for everyone. Tark has talked about eliminating the Department of Education. His colleagues in Congress voted for what would have been the largest slash to the Pell Grant in history. Luckily Democrats in Congress blocked that from becoming a reality.
Horsford will protect the Pell Grant. He’ll vote for permanently reducing those student loan interest rates that Republicans want to see go up. He’ll fight to make sure Nevada gets its fair share of federal dollars for education (currently it doesn’t), and he will support more investment in early childhood education and research at our institutions of higher learning. That’s an investment in our state and nation’s future that we need.
Danny Tarkanian Is Too Extreme
If eliminating the Department of Education doesn’t peel back your skin, Danny Tarkanian openly supports racial profiling and laws like SB1070 that allow officers in Arizona to detain someone without a warrant for “suspicion” of a violation of immigration laws. Sounds scary and vague to me, but Danny Tarkanian said he “loved” SB1070.
A few other extreme positions Danny takes:
Self-Admitted TEA Party Member
Would Privatize Social Security
Called ending Medicare “a great place to start”
Supports Storing Nuclear Waste in Your Back Yard at Yucca Mountain
Danny is also going through a 17 million dollar law suit… and guess who he owes the money to? Yes, the federal government. Do we really want him deciding the laws and influencing the people he owes money to? Sounds like a conflict of interest to me.
Don’t Let Them Buy This Election
Karl Rove and other Super PACs have spent $3.2 million dollars from out of state anonymous donors to trash Steven Horsford with outright lies and manipulations. As Harry Reid said just today, it’s the effort of 17 angry old white guys to buy an election.
Steven Horsford Fought to Save the Millennium Scholarship
Karl Rove’s latest commercial attacking Steven Horsford is simply disgraceful. Television stations should have some standards and pull the ads from the air… because they certainly qualify as libelous/slanderous. In this ad, they make the outrageous claim that Senator Horsford voted to take funds from families who paid into the Nevada College Savings Plan. It’s absolutely preposterous, and both conservative and liberal fact checkers have said as much.
The reality is that this board Steven was on which included Republican Assemblyman and Senators, unanimously voted to use funds from the Nevada College Savings Plan to preserve the Millennium Scholarship.
Hugh Jackson on Channel 3 said there is basically nothing true in this ad:
This brings up one last point worth mentioning. Steven Horsford and fellow colleagues like Democrat Harry Reid are against this unlimited campaign spending by Super PACs with anonymous donors. Steven told me specifically that we need to overturn Citizens United and we need major campaign finance reform in this country so that wealthy outside donors won’t be able to buy elections any more. I couldn’t agree more.
Share this article on Facebook and Twitter and where ever else. Let’s get Steven Horsford elected. Do it!
On a side note, what the H happened to Danny Tarkanian in this picture? Danny had previously made an atrocious comment that Horsford was “pretending to be black.” Pot –> See Kettle!
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Justin is the publisher The Nevada View, which has earned the recognition in the Washington Post’s “Best State-Based Political Blogs,” as well as being awarded the “Most Valuable Blogger Award” by the local CBS affiliate in 2011. Justin is also an associate at the Ramirez Group in Las Vegas. Follow him on Twitter @McAffee |
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