Sen. Hecht of Nevada Takes to Back Roads

If U.S. Sen. Jacob (Chic) Hecht (R.-Nev.) is not returned to the Senate in 1988, it will not be because he has lost touch with Nevada voters.

Recently, for the fourth time since he was elected in 1982, Hecht drove more than 1,000 miles through this vast state to meet with voters in rural communities.

In places like Ely, Elko, Battle Mountain and Winnemucca, Hecht attended “buckaroo breakfasts,” shook hands at county fairs and rodeos and held a series of “Chat With Chic” meetings with local office holders and ordinary citizens.

“I think it’s my job to stay in touch,” Hecht explained. “In 1982 I was running against a man (former Democratic Sen. Howard Cannon) who had been in office for 24 years and was frequently criticized for not keeping in contact with the state. I swore I would never let that happen to me.”

Although not many people turned out for some of the “Chat With Chic” sessions, those who did seemed appreciative.

“It’s real good to have the senator come through here,” said Dave Pastorino, an official in Eureka, a small gold mining community in the middle of the state. “I can’t remember the last time we saw Paul Laxalt (Nevada’s senior senator).”

Hecht and seven staff members--five from Washington and two from Nevada--made the trip in two rented vans. Staff members scrambled for places in the smaller of the two vans, which had an FM radio and an air-conditioner that worked, a useful feature as daytime temperatures climbed over 100 degrees.

Some of the young staffers gave the impression that there were places they might rather be during the late-summer Senate break than bouncing around the “cow counties” of Nevada, but none complained.

“A lot of staff people in Washington never visit the home states of their senators,” said George Stewart, a 27-year-old legislative assistant who was on his fourth “Chat With Chic” tour. “It’s helpful to meet the people that you deal with by phone or letter all the time.”

Although the Hecht tours have encountered few logistical problems, occasionally there has been a mishap. On the first day of this year’s tour, press secretary Mike Miller chipped a tooth when the van in which he was riding hit a bump. The tooth became infected and had to be drained at the Naval Air Station hospital in Fallon five days later.

Wrong turns have been taken and once a van ran out of gas in a remote location.

Some of the accommodations would not rate four stars in the Michelin Guide.

First stop this year was the Shady Rest Motel in Caliente, a town of fewer than 1,000 people about 150 miles north of Las Vegas, where a pack of howling dogs kept some of the travelers awake.

“They howled most of the night,” said Miller, “but once in a while a train would come by and drown them out.”

Miller carries ear plugs for such emergencies, but they were no match for the baying hounds.

However, Hecht slept soundly and said he was delighted that 70 or 75 Caliente citizens turned up for a potluck supper and “town hall meeting” at a former girls’ reform school.

“Almost 10% of the population was there and they asked very good questions,” he said. “That means they’re really interested in government. . . . These are the real people of America.”

From Caliente the senator’s party moved on to Ely, an economically depressed town of 4,500 people that is only 60 miles west of the Utah state line.

There Hecht stayed in Cell 141 at the Jailhouse Motel, which proved to be a comfortable establishment, despite the unpromising name.

At the next stop, Elko, a thriving town on Interstate 80 in northern Nevada, Hecht bet $2 on a quarter horse named Country Girl Lou in the first race at the annual Elko County Fair and Livestock Show.

The senator did so because he saw the horse befouling the track on its way to the starting gate and reasoned that, thus lightened, Country Girl Lou would breeze to victory, but she did not.

Retail Merchant

Hecht, 57, is a successful Las Vegas retail merchant and former Nevada state senator whose 1982 victory over Cannon, the longtime Democratic incumbent, surprised most political experts.

Cannon had been weakened by a bitter primary fight against James D. Santini (who is running for the U.S. Senate as a Republican this year) and by his being named as the object of a bribe in the trial leading to the conviction of former Teamsters Union President Roy L. Williams.

After polling Nevada voters, political advisers Lyn Nofziger and Ken Reitz told Hecht he could defeat Cannon “if I just didn’t make a major mistake,” the senator said during the recent tour, “and that’s what happened.”

Part of the strategy was not to make major speeches since Hecht has suffered from a speech impediment since childhood that causes him to slur the letter “s” and to mispronounce certain words.

“I had one of the few campaigns in history where I didn’t make a major speech,” Hecht said. “It wasn’t my idea--you hire people to tell you what to do and then you do it.”

Took Laxalt’s Advice

For the first two years of his term little was heard from Hecht, who followed Laxalt’s advice to study the ways of the Senate and to say little during that time.

But gradually Hecht has emerged as one of the Senate’s most conservative members, a position that was made clear as he spoke to the rural audiences.

Hecht was one of 12 senators to oppose economic sanctions against the South African government and he is an enthusiastic supporter of the Nicaraguan contras.

At several stops on the tour Hecht said the Sandinistas were “determined to establish an East German police state” in Nicaragua and wanted to “export communism throughout Central America and into Mexico.”

The senator told a luncheon group at Evah’s Copper Queen in Ely that the Sandinistas “are putting rocket sites all around the country.”

Questioned later, Hecht said he meant to say the Nicaraguan government is “setting the stage” for installing missile bases by building a 12,000-foot runway for the large planes that would be needed to bring in missile parts.

Hecht also said the United States should support repressive regimes such as that of Gen. Augusto Pinochet in Chile, as long as they are anti-Communist.

“We didn’t like (former Cuban President Fulgencio) Batista and we ended up with Castro,” he said. “We didn’t like the Shah of Iran and we ended up with Khomeini. We didn’t like Diem (Ngo Dinh Diem, president of South Vietnam during the early stages of American involvement there) and we ended up with the Vietnam War.

Litmus Test

“Everybody can’t be wonderful,” Hecht added, “but as long as they oppose communism, that’s the litmus test.”

Most of Hecht’s rural Nevada audiences were less interested in his national and international views than in his positions on matters of pressing local concern.

In Ely he was questioned about a possible national park, Nevada’s first, in the Wheeler Peak area, 60 miles east of Ely.

Hecht, Laxalt and Rep. Barbara Vucanovich (R-Nev.) are supporting a Senate bill that would create a 44,000-acre park, while the House of Representatives already has passed a bill, sponsored by Nevada’s other congressman, Democrat Harry Reid, calling for a 174,000-acre park.

Hecht told his Ely audiences that he hoped a park bill could be passed during the brief fall congressional session, but that he would not agree to more than 44,000 acres because it would interfere with mining and ranching.

If that is the final Republican position, Reid said three days later, as he waited in a Winnemucca casino parking lot for the annual rodeo parade to begin, “There won’t be a park bill this year.”

At several stops, Hecht was asked about the high-level nuclear waste dump that the U.S. Department of Energy might place at Yucca Mountain, north of Las Vegas.

A Tricky Issue

When Hecht met with Eureka County officials in the handsome, well-maintained courthouse built in 1897, County Recorder Mike Rebaleati said: “I don’t think there’s too many people in this county who want Nevada to be the dumping ground for the country.”

This is a tricky issue for Hecht, who initially supported the nuclear waste facility but has backed off in the face of overwhelming opposition throughout the state.

He told Rebaleati: “We’ve got to have nuclear power in America because the Russians have us outnumbered 100 to 1 . . . and if you have it, you’ve got to store it someplace.”

But later, in an interview, Hecht said he agreed with a recent Laxalt comment that it was “probably politically unacceptable” to locate the dump within the continental United States.

The senator was repeatedly praised for his efforts to abolish the federal 55-m.p.h. speed limit, which is especially aggravating to rural Nevada drivers.

“It’s ludicrous, it’s ridiculous,” said the sheriff of Eureka County. “I’m charged with administering it, but I’ll be candid with you--in 10 years I haven’t written a ticket under that law. I’ve got better things to do.”

Hecht replied: “I could not agree with you or admire you more.”

Even if Hecht cannot do much about the problems that were discussed during his long trek through the cow counties--the nuclear waste dump, the new national park or the Sandinistas, for that matter--it seemed to make people feel better to know that a U.S. senator had traveled such a long distance to talk things over.

“He cared to come by,” said Kent Harper, editor of the Ely Daily Times. “That seems to count for quite a bit out in the rural areas.”

The trip helped Hecht politically, not only in the towns he visited, but in the state at large, where he is building a reputation for keeping close to his constituents.

Many Nevada political observers expect popular Democratic Gov. Richard Bryan to try for Hecht’s seat in 1988 and some have speculated that the Republicans might try to drop Hecht in favor of a stronger candidate.

But Hecht will be hard to dislodge.

“I plan to run; my campaign is gearing up,” he said. “I feel very good about it, a lot better than I felt the first time. This is a conservative state and I’ve been one of the most conservative senators. You can’t take anything for granted, but I think I’ll be the nominee and I also think I’ll be reelected.”