SUBMITTED RELEASE FROM NEVADA STATE DEMOCRATIC PARTY
LAS VEGAS–Tomorrow Sue Lowden will stage a publicity event where she will claim that President Obama’s remarks one year ago–that banks that received federal money to stay afloat (a policy she supported) shouldn’t go on expensive junkets, no matter the destination–were harmful to the Las Vegas economy.
But it’s Lowden who has some tough questions to answer about her own positions, which would put our crucial tourism economy in serious jeopardy. At tomorrow’s news conference, she has some explaining to do on these issues:
· Why didn’t Sue Lowden call on Bush to reverse his anti-Las Vegas travel policy while she was chairwoman of the Nevada Republican Party? Sue Lowden adamantly blames the Obama administration for discouraging travel by government agencies to Las Vegas. But Pres. George W. Bush actually implemented a policy barring government agencies from going to conventions or holding meetings in Las Vegas. Sen. Harry Reid successfully worked with Obama and his Cabinet secretaries to end that Bush-era policy and sign letters stating cities like Las Vegas and Reno would not be discriminated against by federal agencies.
· How can Lowden claim that Obama’s comments are damaging, when she herself told 40 million visitors that travel isn’t safe? Sue Lowden has said our air travel system, which brings more than 40 million people to Las Vegas each year, isn’t safe. “I don’t think it’s safe” to fly, Lowden said. Yet while Lowden has complained about her fear of flying, Reid has been busy securing funding for state-of-the-art security systems for McCarran International Airport.
· How can she criticize Obama’s comments, when she’s willing to put the future of our tourism industry at risk by bringing nuclear waste to Nevada? Sue Lowden wants to ship nuclear waste from all around the country to Yucca Mountain to be reprocessed. The site, 90 miles away from Las Vegas, is on a fault line and has been proven to be unsafe. In addition to advocating a process that would produce weapons-grade nuclear material, Lowden’s plan would jeopardize Nevada’s largest industry and be a job killer.
· What will it take for Lowden, Gibbons’ handpicked chairwoman of the Nevada GOP and one of the only people to endorse him for re-election, to finally admit that Gibbons has been a destructive force for this state? With the State of the State mere hours away and Nevada facing more serious budget challenges than ever before, why is Sue Lowden standing by embattled Gov. Jim Gibbons? The governor has thought nothing of lying to his wife, to the people of Nevada and perhaps even in court.
