Low turnout or resume, Beers has year to prove himself

The "anybody but Bob Beers" vote in this week's Las Vegas City Council Ward 2 special election was strong: 3,320 people voted for one of the other eight candidates on the ballot.

But none of them was able to muster Beers' 1,924 votes -- which, by the way, is more than former Councilman Steve Wolfson garnered when he was first elected in a special election back in 2004.

Still, Beers must be cognizant of the fact that, were his opposition not divided among so many candidates, this might have been a very different race. That's especially true given that only 5,245 of the ward's 42,706 voters bothered to participate, either in person, during early voting or by mail-in ballots.

That won't be the case in early 2013, when Beers will face opponents in a regular election cycle, complete with a primary and, perhaps, a two-person general election runoff.

"It was just a very unengaged electorate," said Steve Redlinger, campaign manager for Planning Commissioner Ric Truesdell, the No. 2 vote-getter on Tuesday. "The turnout was so small it sort of amplified the rest of the base."

Redlinger is one of those who believes that Beers could have been vulnerable had the field not been so large, and that he may be vulnerable in next year's election. "He's certainly got a back door to watch," Redlinger said. "He's got some work to do."

One thing is certain: The allegations Truesdell slung at Beers have outlived their usefulness. Fliers hit Beers for a host of alleged sins, including that he allegedly took action to help a former employer avoid paying a $1 million fine.

That charge was leveled against Beers in 2008, when he lost his state Senate seat to Democrat Allison Copening. But Beers sued the Nevada Democratic Party for defamation, and the case was settled with an acknowledgement the allegation was false, plus a $2,500 donation from the Democrats to Opportunity Village.

Beers also sued Truesdell's campaign in the closing days of the campaign, and the lingering bitterness of the race hadn't eased as of Wednesday.

"I would have conducted myself differently" than Truesdell, Beers said dryly.

The former state senator attributes his victory not to low turnout or diffused votes, but to his message. "I think it was the resume," he said. Beers is an accountant who made a name for himself in Carson City closely reviewing the state budget, a practice he says he'll take up at City Hall. Beers said voters decided they wanted a fiscal expert watching every dollar during tough economic times. "I hope to become a resource for my fellow council members with the resume that I bring to this job," he said.

To that end, Beers said he believes public safety -- and not downtown redevelopment -- should be the city's priority. That hard-to-dispute message may resonate with voters in the wake of the opening of a brand-new City Hall and the city-backed Mob Museum. (Full disclosure: My wife works for a PR firm that represents the Mob Museum.) It's also a message that attracted the endorsement of the Las Vegas firefighters union.

Then again, with no major city-financed projects on the horizon and with an economy only slowly gaining ground, there may not be many pitched fiscal battles down on Main Street during the next year. That's a year Beers has to dig into the budget, shore up his reputation for fiscal conservatism and prove to voters (all 43,000 of them in his ward, not just the 12 percent who turned out this week) that they made the right call sending him to City Hall.

Steve Sebelius is a Review-Journal political columnist and author of the blog SlashPolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter (@SteveSebelius) or reach him at (702) 387-5276 or ssebelius@reviewjournal.com.