Candidates forum Part II

Note: This is Part II of II on Nye County’s candidates.

The Pahrump Valley Chamber of Commerce hosted a nonpartisan virtual event, where candidates running in Nye County seats did a final call to voters just before elections.

The top question was given to Judge Bonnie Bulla, nominee to the Nevada Court of Appeals, in which she explained how she will handle the court challenges.

“For our five-year-old court the most significant challenge is going to be able to continue making high-quality decisions with the significant volume of work,” said Judge Bulla. “The last physical year our court resolved over a thousand appeals and that’s because the population growth and so the appeals continue to grow as well.”

Meanwhile, nominees for Nevada’s District 19 senate seat, incumbent Sen. Pete Goicoechea, R-Eureka, and Tiffany Seedback for the Independent American Party, agreed that constituents should be involved in the process of bills being discussed on the floor.

Nominees to the Court Justice of The Peace Pahrump, Walt Grudzinski, and Kent Jasperson both agreed on being able to hear both sides of the case and eventually ruling based on facts rather than assumptions.

However, there were some differences between these two candidates in regards to Gov. Steve Sisolak’s Declaration of Emergency Directive 008, which prohibits landlords from evicting tenants on residential or commercial establishments until the directive is rescinded by order of the Governor.

“The judge should interpret the law as it was written in regards to eviction,” said Grudzinski.

“Those directives would take a long time due to COVID-19, and I don’t believe to execute force of eviction,” said Jasperson.

And as to how would the next Nye County Commissioner for District 3 will handle funds for projects, the nominee Donna Cox stated clear that as a county official she always makes sure no to use lots of taxpayers’ money on projects that make no sense.

“We are the ones that do infrastructure, and we can always use extra money to that but I don’t want to rely on taxpayers’ money that needs to go to other projects,” she said.

One of the most controversial aspects and key elements for any individual running for judge or justices is their philosophy standpoint, which can sometimes turn into a moral decision rather than applying the law as it was written.

For Kimberly Wanker, nominee to District Court Judge, Department 1, the level of any applicable charges will be based on the existing laws.

“The role of a judge is to apply the law as it was written regardless of personal opinion or belief,” Wanker said. “What I would do is to read all cases and apply the charge level base on the law already established.”

And so the forum was the culmination of the Nye County running candidates for the 2020 races.

Extra source for Governor Sisolak directive 008:

https://nvhealthresponse.nv.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Declaration-of-Emergency-Directive-008-re-Evictions.3-29-20.pdf