As he seeks Nevada’s highest office, Democrat Clark County politician Steve Sisolak is so afraid of facing tough questions, he’s now barring members of the press from his campaign events. Victor Joecks, a Las Vegas Review-Journalcolumnist, writes that Sisolak used private security to stop him from attending an open-press event. Not only did Sisolak’s campaign bar Joecks from attending the event, but his security guards also threatened to break his cellphone when he tried to take pictures.
This comes just weeks after Sisolak was caught on tape asking an audience at one of his campaign events to not ask him any tough questions in order to avoid political embarrassment. Sisolak clearly has serious fears about facing any kind of scrutiny for his wildly inconsistent political positions, and his refusal to face any tough questions on the campaign trail proves that he cannot be trusted by Nevada voters.
Read more from Victor Joecks in the Las Vegas Review-Journal:
Going to press events is a normal part of my job. What happened Monday — as I walked to a news conference at which Democratic gubernatorial candidate Steve Sisolak announced his education plan — isn’t.
Sisolak held the event on the third floor of a building owned by Switch. As I got off the elevator, there were two security guards there and a Sisolak campaign staffer. The staffer asked me to sign in and then walked away in a panic when he realized who I was — a conservative columnist.
Sisolak’s communications director, Barb Solish, came out and told me, ‘There’s no reason for you to be at this press event…’
I then took pictures of the campaign worker and security guard. The security guard threatened to break my phone. Lovely. It’ll be interesting to see how much of an in-kind contribution Switch reports for having its security threaten a media member on Sisolak’s behalf. Switch didn’t return a call for comment.
There have been liberal columnists in Nevada for years. I’ve never heard of a Republican turning one of them away from a press event. There would have been no end to the — rightful — bellyaching if that had happened. In contrast to Sisolak, Republican gubernatorial candidate Adam Laxalt’s campaign has even allowed reporters from an organization funded in part by contributions from Sisolak to cover Laxalt events.
If Sisolak can’t even handle the presence of an opinion columnist, he’s not ready to run a state full of diverse opinions.
Previously: