Much has been written and nothing has ever been done about public employees running for legislative positions irrespective of Nevada law which bars such participation for obvious reasons in our Dillon state.  But there are also other conflicts that should give voters pause when private-sector candidates make the wrong decisions regarding running for office and without any regard to appearances, ethical conduct, and actual conflicts of interest.

If you have an appearance of a conflict of interest or ethical dilemma, it is automatically an actual conflict of interest and ethical dilemma and you shouldn’t go forward.

Here are three cases in point:

State Senator David Parks is not of the private sector but is currently running for the Rory Reid seat on the Clark County Commission and he accepted a $5,000 check from Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani-Gray on December 4, 2009.

They have been friends for forever, but Parks doesn’t see that taking that 5K as the political money-laundering it appears to be when he admitted to me Gary Gray is managing his current campaign and his latest filing lists Gray & Associates under ‘F’ consulting expenses on December 18, 2009, beginning just 14 days after his receiving Chris G’s hefty donation!

It’s essentially taking money out of one family member’s pocket and placing into another member’s pocket through a third-party intermediary.

But, the much bigger conflict for Senator David Parks is that by his accepting her money, it makes it look like Chris G-G is buying his vote for her to be Chairman of the Clark County Board of Commissioners which everyone in the state expects her to attempt despite her having very powerful enemies.  Given that by some accounts, Gary Gray consulting business is almost nonexistent because of the ongoing FBI investigation of him, on its face, it looks like Chris G-G is laundering her campaign money to her husband through Senator David Parks to keep her old man afloat.

Chris G-G looks like she’s buying Sen David Parks vote for Chairman to many observers.  Few want her as Clark County Board Chairman though.

Because she is taking her campaign money and apparently going through a third party close friend in Senator David Parks to enrich her husband/family’s bottom line, the $5,000 may in fact be taxable income for both Chris and Gary and has apparently caught the attention of the FBI agents’ continuing investigation of her husband.

It also just looks exceedingly bad David.  Give the money back to Chris G-G and restore your reputation.

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Tammy Peterson for State Senate 08 is perhaps the most highly conflicted Democratic primary candidate of the last decade.  She was a former prosecutor but is now a partner at Jones Vargas, one of the state’s premier law/lobbying firms.

Her CCE filings read like a Who’s Who of Nevada’s law/lobbying power elite.  Given that she is a full partner at Jones Vargas and with their many, many clients before the upcoming 2011 session, Tammy Peterson will have to recuse herself from almost every single vote that comes before the Nevada Senate.

Highly unethical and highly conflicted Jones Vargas partner, Tammy Peterson!

Tammy Peterson is rightly being called ‘the most highly conflicted and unethical Dem candidate’ in recent memory by people within her own firm and within the Democratic Party.

Should she actually win, her entire tenure in the legislature will be ethics complaint after ethics complaint from affected parties with business before the state senate in opposition to Jones Vargas’s client interests.

Sen Bill Raggio is a partner in the same firm, but she is no Bill Raggio.

Her firm is also uber-connected to the Republican establishment in Nevada and Ms Peterson’s husband is a lifelong registered Republican and Ms Peterson has never had any credible connection to the Democratic Party before her firm and Steven Horsford apparently went candidate shopping for the 2011 session.

In an odd twist, Tammy Peterson has also taken money from Chris Giunchigliani-Gray and also happily accepted a $1,000 check from attorney Laura Fitzsimmons who sits at the epicenter of Gary Gray-Giunchigliani’s current FBI probe!

So, apparently candidate Tammy Peterson has absolutely no moral, legal, or ethical compass with regard to her political ambitions.

Check out all of the lobbyists from Jones Vargas and the clients for the 2010 special session:

http://www.leg.state.nv.us/Lobbyist/reports/ListLobbyists.cfm?Paid=2&Session=26SS

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Irene Bustamante-Adams for Assembly District 42 is without question the worst political campaigner I have ever seen in Nevada and who is apparently just phoning it in and staying locked in a room somewhere.  She’s depending on assumed Speaker, John Oceguera and the always unethical Assemblyman Kelvin Atkinson to pull her through.

Fiercely anti-union Dem and strong supporter of  MGM-Mirage’s embrace of Chinese organized crime and Dubai’s hatred of women, MGM-Mirage shill, Irene Bustamante-Adams and her family may face constant harassment at her home and on the campaign trail from poorly treated former MGM-Mirage employees should she win.

She is the handpicked anti-union, anti-gaming tax person of  garbage chairman of MGM-Mirage, James Murren, who seeks from his gaming industry management subordinate, her vote to tamp down any attempt to raise Nevada’s world’s lowest gaming taxes and crush pro-union efforts of office workers and dealers.

You saw their reaction to any tax increases during the 2010 special session!  Murren has every right to order how Bustamante-Adams votes because she is MGM-Mirage management.

She is also the ‘Diversity Director’ of MGM-Mirage’s badly failed CityCenter project and is the presumed Democratic apologist for MGM-Mirage’s partnering with the repulsive regimes of the United Arab Emirates that completely subjugate and enslave women and are misogynistic through and through.

How Irene Bustamante-Adams can look herself in the mirror each day being employed by such a vile entity as MGM-Mirage is one problem for her, but a much bigger problem is how she explains to partisan Democratic women MGM-Mirage’s full embrace of their Islamic world’s investment partner’s utter hatred of women and her fully agreeing with it by remaining in their employ!

MGM-Mirage chairman, James Murren, is as evil as he looks here and he also enthusiastically embraces Chinese organized crime through their very close ties and relationship with Pansy Ho, the daughter of one of the world’s most notorious organized crime leaders.

Ms Bustamante-Adams is apparently just fine with misogyny and organized crime and Oceguera and Atkinson are keeping her off the campaign trail and away from reporters and questions from partisans so she may be elected and provide a dependable vote against raising Nevada’s world’s lowest gaming taxes and so they can continue to get a lot of Gaming’s money in return.

Agitating under the radar, however, is that several MGM-Mirage properties’ employees are considering joining other Strip efforts to unionize different grades of employees from dealers to office workers.

One of MGM-Mirage’s properties could become the first in the industry to organize office workers; that’s how much their employees truly hate the company and truly hate its chairman James Murren.

MGM-Mirage is one of the very worst companies in America and one of the worst employers in the state that has fired, laid-off, or placed on ‘on-call’ status, thousands of its employees while its management is bloated and highly paid, inviting those ignored workers to come in and flood AD 42 against MGM-Mirage and their hand-picked pigeon shill, Irene Bustamante-Adams.

Bustamante–Adams is so disliked within her company that this race could be the headline maker with pickets in front of her home through November for her putting her votes up for sale to her employer and political owners.

So, the old adage of be careful what you wish/vote for is evident in all three of these candidates today.

Part II on Friday!

Mike Zahara
03032010
www.WatchdogWag.com