Chamber holds candidate’s forum

Note: This is Part I 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.

Nominees for the Nevada Supreme Court talked about the different challenges in running the highest court of the state.

“I think the most significant challenge is going to be equal access to justice and fairness under the law,” said Ozzie Fumo, nominee to the Nevada Supreme Court for Seat D. “And I think the COVID pandemic taught us all about Zoom and teleconferencing and that’s going to be the way of the future.”

Meanwhile, Douglas Herndon, also nominee to the Nevada Supreme Court for Seat D, had some issues on how the current supreme court is taking longer than usual to handle cases.

“Time to disposition, that is how quickly our people can see their cases coming to some type of resolution,” he said. “It’s been exhaust abated particular at the trial court level by the COVID shutdown and our unavailability to conduct trials.

Kristina Pickering, nominee to the Nevada Supreme Court for Seat B, emphasized the importance of hearing every single case regardless of its weight or nature.

“The largest challenge is keeping the court moving and ensuring the cases are fully and fairly heard,” she said. “We received a true gift from the voters in 2014 when they approved the creation of the court of appeals and that has made a different sense.

Pickering also pointed out that thanks to the creation of the court of appeals, Nevada became the No. 1 busiest court in the country handling more cases per justices than any other court in the nation.

Both nominees to the state assembly, Alexis Hansen, for District 32 and Gregory Hafen II, for District 36, said COVID-19 has brought some restrictions to constituents in Nye County. Both believe that for some citizens it is very difficult to adapt to virtual meetings instead of in-person, as it was before the pandemic. However, they did mention that there are lots of informational tools on their websites so people can learn how to easily participate in state assembly meetings and leave feedback as well.

Nonetheless, Frank Carbone, running for the Nye County Commission seat for Nye’s District 2, talking to people is one of the best ways to approach residents to get involved in the decisions made by public officials.

“Effectiveness, we also do it on the TV, where everybody gets to see on television, and we also have the media people here doing it, so that’s a great thing,” he said. “We also have townhalls where we get people to be involved to see what we have in the calendar.”

Carbone also believes that not shaking hands but elbows due to the health crisis is a perfect way to show a willingness to do the job for the constituents.

But an important topic for voters is the current economy and so the nominee for the Nye County Treasurer, John Wesley Prudhont, said that a good strategy to balance an economy is to “analyze numbers.” Those numbers begin by arranging public official positions according to their skills. John believes is the starting point to administrate funds to better benefit public services.