Potential candidates beginning to eye 2017 city elections

The protracted 2016 election cycle is drawing to a close, but the 2017 city elections will start ramping up on the heels of this year’s national, state and county races.

In Las Vegas, Kelli Ross aims to succeed her husband, Steve, the mayor pro tempore, in the Ward 6 City Council seat he’s occupied for the past 12 years.

First elected to the council in 2005, Steve Ross is nearing the end of his three-term limit representing fast-growing northwestern Las Vegas. Kelli, 52, made the decision to run for the council seat this year, she said Friday.

“He’d been doing such a good job. I’m concerned about someone else getting in there and not following through on what he’s been doing for the past 12 years,” Kelli Ross said.

She ran in 2012 as a Democrat in state Senate District 18 but lost to Republican Scott Hammond.

Ross has never held public office, but she’s been heavily involved in city issues during her husband’s time on the City Council and maintains that taking over for him would be a “simple learning curve.”

The Rosses have five children, and with the couple’s 14 grandchildren living in Ward 6, Ross said she has a “vested interest” in what goes on there,.

The continued development of the Skye Canyon master-planned community and improvement and maintenance of parks in the family-oriented northwest are among the priorities Ross lists for Ward 6.

Spring elections will be held for the city’s even-numbered wards. The councilmen representing wards 2 and 4, Bob Beers and Stavros Anthony, are serving terms that will expire in 2017.

Beers, who was first elected to the council in a 2012 special election, said last week that he will seek re-election. He served in the Nevada Legislature from 1999 to 2008, a period that included a stint as vice chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

Anthony, who has served two terms on the City Council, couldn’t be reached Friday for comment on his plans. A former Metro police officer, Anthony was first elected to the council in 2009. Last year, he challenged Mayor Carolyn Goodman in her bid for re-election, which she fended off to win a second term.

Goodman was elected mayor in 2011, after her husband, former mayor Oscar Goodman, left office because of term limits. When Ross was asked about the similarities between her running to succeed her husband and Carolyn Goodman doing the same, she quipped, “I don’t think that anyone could fill those big shoes.”

The city’s filing period will run from Jan. 24 to Feb. 3. The primary will be held April 4, and the general election is scheduled for June 13.

A campaign kickoff fundraising event for Ross is slated for Thursday, and Ross said she’s already been busy getting the word out that she’s running in Ward 6.

Because the Ward 6 seat is an open seat, Ross said she expects a larger field of candidates.

Las Vegas city elections are officially nonpartisan. In 2017, city voters will cast their ballots at 15 “voting centers” for the first time rather than at 75 polling places, a move the City Council made this year to cut costs.

The City Council also has been presented with the possibility of moving elections from the spring during odd years to line up with the county election cycle. That move essentially would remove the cost the city pays the county for holding municipal elections.

Mesquite made the move to even-year elections. If Las Vegas transitioned to even-year elections, the shift would need to be spread over a period of time. That issue is expected to return to the City Council for consideration later.

Contact Jamie Munks at jmunks@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0340. Find @JamieMunksRJ on Twitter.