On Jan. 2, Washoe County Registrar of Voters Jamie Rodriguez submitted her resignation.
While Rodriguez has not given a reason and declined a request to speak to the RN&R, her predecessor, Deanna Spikula, cited harassment—including death threats—as a primary reason for her July 2022 resignation.
In a comment made to the Washoe County Board of Commissioners at a Jan. 16 meeting, Jennifer Willett, of All Voting Is Local—an organization that aims to protect voter freedom at the local level—urged the commission to support election officials.
“Election officials have cited harassment, death threats, lack of trust from voters due to election conspiracies, burn out and more,” she said.
In January 2023, Clark County Registrar of Voters Joe Gloria left his position after 28 years due to harassment.
In September 2023, the Nevada Current reported that 10 of Nevada’s 17 counties had lost their top election officials since the 2020 presidential election. Of Western states analyzed in a report by Issue One, Nevada was second only to Arizona in top election officials lost.
In December 2023, CNN reported that threats to public officials have been on the rise in recent years—and the disruption coincides with an especially politically contentious climate in 2024.
In a 2022 analysis, the Bridging Divides Initiative found that “threats to and harassment of local officials present a significant challenge to American democracy by discouraging civic engagement, undermining the work of public servants, and creating unprecedented stress on the cornerstones of democratic society including elections, education and public safety processes. A heightened environment of fear among local officials seems ubiquitous.”
Washoe County is no exception. Officials who hold positions in the areas of education, elections and public safety have witnessed this harassment first-hand. As another presidential election year kicks off, the RN&R spoke with two of these officials.
Kurt Thigpen, Assembly candidate and former School Board trustee
In May 2021, then-Washoe County School Board Trustee Kurt Thigpen announced his resignation after less than six months in office. His short tenure on the school board, intended to be a four-year term, came to an end due to harassment and intimidation from right-wing groups, he said.
This harassment began at the board meetings themselves—including a meeting when attendees protested COVID-19 safety measures by collectively storming the room from their seats in overflow areas. At the height of tensions, a safe room was established, just in case it was needed by members of the board.
Thigpen, a Democrat, said the harassment stemmed from frustration about COVID-19 mitigation efforts in schools and at board meetings, as well as accusations that the board was pushing critical race theory and a gay agenda.
“They pointed to anything that they saw as progressive as being critical race theory, or trying to indoctrinate children,” Thigpen told the RN&R. “We were seeing this play out nationally. It felt like it was part of a playbook.”
Thigpen and some of his fellow trustees weathered threats of violence that were thinly veiled, if at all.
“They had said, ‘Drag them out of their houses,’ and things like that,” he said.
The personal information of Thigpen and of some of his fellow trustees—including Thigpen’s home address—was discovered and shared. He began to receive personal attacks through social media, emails, phone calls and texts. More than once, Thigpen said, he and his husband caught strangers lurking around their home.
“I definitely feared for my and my family’s safety,” he said. “I made the decision to resign to protect myself and my family.”
The harassment Thigpen experienced was often homophobic in nature.
“(They were) insinuating that I was hurting children, indoctrinating children. … They were reaching out to make me feel unsafe and let me know that, basically, I was being watched both online and possibly in person,” Thigpen said.
This hatred took an intense toll on his physical and mental well-being. In addition to insomnia and chronic pain, Thigpen said, “I started having a lot of overwhelming anxiety and feelings of depression, which eventually led to suicidal ideations. You know, ‘Maybe it’d be better if I just wasn’t here,’ essentially. When you deal with that much hate coming at you for so long, it does something to somebody. I’m only human.”
Thigpen is currently running for the State Assembly in District 24, which covers most of the center of Reno.
Washoe County District Attorney Christopher Hicks
It’s not uncommon for a county district attorney to receive unsettling emails or veiled threats—something Washoe County DA Christopher Hicks learned in the nine years he’s been in office. However, these threats reached a new level in June 2022, when a Sun Valley man by the name of Nicholas Vietti recorded graphic and detailed threats toward Hicks and Washoe County Sheriff Darin Balaam and their families. The threats earned Vietti the maximum five-year sentence on two counts of intimidation of a public officer with the immediate threat of force.
“These particular acts went so far that they became criminal,” Hicks during an interview with the RN&R.
The extensive, graphic threats were made on Vietti’s podcast, BattleBorn Marine. Vietti threatened to kill Hicks and Balaam—including strangulation, shooting and slitting Balaam’s throat. He also threatened to sell Hicks’ wife into sexual slavery, used homophobic slurs, accused Hicks of being a socialist, claimed to have his home address, and claimed to have placed trackers on “everything.”
“The BattleBorn podcast really took it to the next level,” said Hicks, who is a Republican. “There were very direct threats made to kill me in different ways, to arrest my family members and to rape my wife. There were acknowledgments of knowing where I lived and deadlines given where I had to do certain things, or these (acts of violence) were going to happen.”
These ultimatums related to Vietti’s frustration regarding court orders in a child-support case involving his ex-wife. The Washoe County District Attorney’s Office is mandated to enforce such court orders, and this enforcement led Vietti to fixate on Hicks and Balaam.
“The first day I received the threat, I actually didn’t sleep that night. I kind of set up in an area of my house where I could watch the street just to make sure that nobody was coming,” Hicks said. “We did not know at that time where the defendant was when law enforcement was actively looking for him. So in the following days … it changed my behavior, and it still has to this day.”
Hicks said he now regularly carries a firearm and changes the route he takes on his drive home. In a victim-impact statement Hicks made at Vietti’s sentencing, which was shared with the RN&R, Hicks explained how Vietti’s threats significantly affected his life and made him question continuing his two-decade career in the District Attorney’s Office.
“Is it worth doing anymore? Is it worth death threats?” Hicks stated. “I regularly worry about my safety and my family’s safety. I feel like I always will. … I’m hyper-vigilant about my surroundings. I’m often uneasy even in my own home. I’ve fortified my house with security, watchdogs and other safety measures.”
While Hicks and the District Attorney’s Office have endured threatening messages through the years, the anger has escalated recently, he said.
“There’s definitely an uptick,” Hicks said. “There is a higher frequency of those … disgruntled individuals or veiled threats. And I know that other public officials have been subjected to the same type of thing, whether it be judges or elected policymakers.”