Fennell challenging longtime Assemblywoman Maggie Carlton

If Maggie Carlton wins re-election this year, the Democratic assemblywoman from District 14 in Las Vegas will have run the table of legislative service, consecutively serving the term-limited maximum of 12 years, first in the state Senate and, since 2010, the Assembly.

James Fennell, a homeowners association manager, hopes to interrupt that streak, challenging Carlton in the Democratic primary in a race that will decide the election. There is no Republican candidate on the ballot in November.

Fennell said he was inspired to run by the 2018 upstart candidacy of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who defeated an established incumbent to win her seat in Congress.

“She came out of nowhere,” Fennell said. “So I feel with the enthusiasm, and if I can get (Carlton’s) record out I definitely can win this race.”

Carlton responded skeptically: “So she was his motivation to run against one of the most progressive women in the Nevada Legislature?”

Fennell, on his campaign website, highlights for criticism Carlton’s votes on several bills from the past two legislative sessions. But his criticism, in at least one instance, is a little off base: A 2017 measure that was approved and enacted extended the right for 18-year-olds to apply for and receive a concealed carry weapons permit if serving in or honorably discharged from the armed forces or reserves.

Fennell, who father was an innocent bystander killed in a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles last year, criticized Carlton for not supporting gun control. But she voted against that bill and her support for gun control is well documented: she says Fennell “did not read the bill.”

“I’ve been married to a guy who carries a gun for living, a parole and probation officer for 40 years. I know what it means for somebody to go to work with a gun every day,” she said. “I come at the privilege of carrying a firearm from that perspective.”

Fennell also criticized her vote against a 2019 bill that raised Nevada’s legal marrying age to 17 in almost all cases. Carlton said she opposed the hard-and-fast age limit and had suggested an amendment that provided a loophole in some cases, such as a soldier entering the military and wanting to marry first.

“I always feel there needs to be something in there just in case there’s a special circumstance,” she said.

Fennell, in his campaign material, makes clear education is his priority and lays out an ambitious wish list: He wants more money for teacher salaries and to build new schools, for afterschool programs, universal pre-K, and school counselors and nurses, as well as a limit on interest for student loans.

He also wants lower licensing fees with extended licensing periods; more work benefits for employees, such as better overtime pay and time off; and an infrastructure plan to repair roads and bridges.

“I’ve always had it that I want to be in public service to help those that are not able to help themselves,” he said. “I actually studied political science in college, so I knew that I wanted to be in politics. I just didn’t know when and how.”

He acknowledges a wayward period that led to jail time when he was younger. After college, he returned to Los Angeles, his home at the time, and fell in with the “wrong crowd and ended up being incarcerated for a year” for receiving stolen property, he recounts on his website. The time in prison “made me realize the horrible mistake I made and the hurt I placed on my family.” He moved to Las Vegas in 2010.

Before mid-March, Carlton, who chairs the budget-setting Assembly Ways & Means committee, was hoping her re-election and a return to Carson City would see her involved in setting a course for Nevada’s continued resurgence from the darkest days of fiscal austerity a decade ago.

“I mean, I had a whole kind of schematic on the different things that we had wanted to do — things that had been cut in previous special sessions that we were still building back up,” she said. “We had one of the best quarters we’d ever had in a long time, unemployment was low , It was looking like we were going to be able to accomplish some things that we had been wanting to do for a while.”

Then COVID-19 hit. The state’s revenues fell off a cliff, the state’s economy with it. Recalling the state’s last fiscal crisis, which happened as she moved from the Senate to the Assembly, she says current circumstances are different. The Great Recession was about money and foreclosures.

“This is more about people’s health and their sense of security,” she said. “I’ve always said this: that our budget is a moral document. Just like a family budget, it reflects what you believe in. And we believe in health care, education, public safety – those are the things that that we believe in.

“I’ve worked on that budget since 2011,” she added. “This will be the last time that I will be on this committee, and I’ll be able to get the work done and help guide the committee through the process of restructuring this budget so that Nevada will be successful in the future.”

Contact Capital Bureau reporter Bill Dentzer at bdentzer@reviewjournal.com. Follow @DentzerNews on Twitter.