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Open Letter Regarding Assembly Republican Caucus
Leadership
January 2, 2015
Your reasoning that you can remove me as
Majority Leader is faulty, to say the least. Following that reasoning to
its logical conclusion means you could also remove Assemblywoman
Kirkpatrick as Minority Leader. You were elected by the Assembly Republican
Caucus as the Speaker-designee, not as an all-powerful
potentate.
Additionally, you removed me as the Chair of
the Assembly Taxation Committee, and you also removed Assemblywoman
Victoria Seaman and Assemblyman Brent Jones from that same committee.
According to rule 41(1) of the Assembly Standing Rules, it is your
prerogative to do so; however, you also announced you were removing me as
Majority Leader of the Assembly Republican Caucus and replacing me with
Assemblyman Paul Anderson.
There is no rule in the Assembly Standing
Rules that allows you to arbitrarily remove me from an elected Caucus
position. Neither have the members of the Caucus been presented with any
evidence from any source that allows you to overrule my election by a
majority of the Assembly Republican Caucus as the Majority Leader of the
Caucus. You need to know that a sizable portion of the members of the
Caucus still consider me the Majority Leader, as do I. I will be occupying
my Majority Leader office January 5th.
You have stated publicly that I have
threatened to bring suit for your decision to remove me as Majority Leader
of the Assembly Republican Caucus. I wish to state clearly, concisely and
categorically that I have never considered such a move nor have I told
anyone that I was considering such a move. Anyone who told you I was
considering doing so does not have the best interests of the Caucus as
their goal; rather, they are trying to wreak havoc among our
members.
As far as I know the only threatened legal
action has been by your political adviser, Nathan Emens, who you told me
was threatening to sue every member of the caucus and that was the reason
you were attempting to remove me by fiat.
In addition to threatening legal action
against all the members of our Caucus, we now know that Mr. Emens also
helped in Meghan Smith's failed campaign to defeat Victoria Seaman in the
2014 General Election. Neither of these actions are conducive to Caucus
harmony, and until they are discussed among members and cleared up, remain
a problem for the Caucus.
Rule 1(1) of the Assembly Standing Rules does
give you authority over “officers of the Assembly,” it does not
give you the power to overrule the decisions of the Caucuses. In addition
according to the National Council of State Legislatures (http://www.ncsl.org/
I do know how to count votes and realize I
might not survive a new vote for Majority Leader, but that vote must be
taken, and it must be taken as soon as possible. The January 5, 2015
meeting that you unilaterally canceled would have been the perfect time for
that vote, and I urge you to reconsider. As the Majority Leader I'm calling
that meeting. Our caucus will meet January 5th at 3:30pm in our caucus
room. It is in the best interests of the Caucus to bring this unfortunate
incident to a conclusion.
I will abide by the decision of the Caucus
and look forward to working to bring about the real changes Nevada needs
and the people who elected us deserve.
On a final note: I ask that you address
directly Assemblyman Hickey's recent, quite insulting column in which he
referred to our caucus as "a second-rate Vegas lounge act" while repeating
a media reference to us as the "Clown Caucus."
For the record, is this sort of offensive
personal attack on our caucus by a fellow caucus member acceptable under
your leadership? If is not acceptable, why have you decided to reward this
type of behavior by assigning Mr. Hickey premier office space.
That said, Mr. Hickey also complained about
"partisan caucuses, meeting secretly behind closed doors," and wrote that
he hoped such clandestine meetings "one day become an endangered political
species."
In that spirit of open transparency - and
since these leadership questions will affect all Nevadans that we
represent, not just caucus members - I intend to post this particular
letter on my website so that everyone knows exactly what is going on and
exactly what my positions are on this situation. I'm copying our Governor,
our legal division and our Chief of the Assembly as well.
I encourage you to do the same with your
response. This is not an issue that should be resolved behind closed doors
via "internal communication only."
Assemblywoman Majority Leader Michele
Fiore
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