Fred Lokken is a political scientist at Truckee Meadows Community College.
We’re at midpoint or a little later in the campaign. Give it a letter grade for its civics book-quality of educating the public.
Either a D-minus or an F-plus. There’s been very little effort by any of the candidates in any of the races to do anything to really inform. Television ads and newspaper ads … have been outrageously negative. They’ve demonstrated each campaign’s ability to dig up the dirt on the other, but you could count the number of positive ads that are trying to explain what the candidates stand for on one hand and only using a couple of fingers. At this stage in the race … there’s no effort to really explain the stances. That’s what the advertising in this campaign is supposed to be about, so that people can make a judgment, and they have nothing to make a judgment on at this point.
It used to be—even during this meanspirited, polarized era—campaigns would start out polite and at some point they would go negative. Now they just start out negative.
Exactly. And the reason for that is … the reality is that all the outside money pours into the state right off the bat now. They were ready. They were launching. They did the spending all through the summer. Now, we also know that most voters don’t pay much attention during the summer. And we also know that most Nevada voters [were] so inundated with negative advertising in campaigns over the last four election cycles that we’re now kind of numb and anesthetized to it. But that being said, it’s still that they’re at a high volume, and they’re destructive. It’s not good for the democracy, actually for any candidate that wins because a lot of that negative stuff just hangs out there. And what happened this election cycle is the negatives began in the primary. And roll forward, now, into the general election, so you’ve had—anyone that’s even paying attention to the ads [has] had some five months of negative advertising already. And we wonder why we have a cynical view of politics, why we hate our politicians, why we don’t trust them.
People say that the pendulum always swings back, that one of these days we’ll become reasonable and dignified again.
I’m less and less optimistic because this is such a trend. The Supreme Court decisions need to be changed. The notion that you have freedom to contribute [money] and to do so in an uncontrolled and regulated manner is destroying our elective system at the federal level and sometimes at the state level. … But, no, too much money, from dark sources. Now, they don’t even have to tell us who they are. This is horrible, and it just gets worse every election cycle. … The system is not self-regulating. It can’t fix itself anymore. …
A Reno Gazette Journal letter to the editor said the writer sees lots of Laxalt ads but few Sisolak ads. Why is Sisolak not out there as much?
Basically, he chewed up his war chest in the primary, whereas Laxalt was given a gift when [other Republicans stayed out of the primary]. The reality, too, is that we have a lot [more] outside money coming in for Laxalt than we do for Sisolak. [An] ad now points out the connection with one of the Koch brothers. Adam Laxalt is not a Nevadan by any stretch of the imagination. He’s a carpetbagger politician who came back funded from outside the state of Nevada [by] financial interests. This is an engineered candidate that they’re trying to take some place. And I’m hoping Nevada voters will pay attention to that.
