Earlier this year, Nevadans voted in a primary election. It wasn’t terribly controversial. But this year marks the fiftieth anniversary of one of the most controversial and significant primaries in Nevada’s history, and the fortieth of another. Let’s start with the earlier one.
In 1972, Walter Baring sought his eleventh term in Congress. He was a Goldfield native who was living in Reno when he won his first race for Congress in 1948. He served two terms, then lost his reelection bid in 1952 to Cliff Young, later a state senator and state supreme court justice. Baring lost a comeback bid in 1954. When Young tried to move up to the Senate in 1956, Baring ran and won. And kept winning, every two years.
One reason Baring kept winning was his knowledge of Nevada and his voters. If you told him only four votes had come in so far from Fish Lake Valley in Esmeralda County, he could tell you who hadn’t voted yet and why. Another reason was Baring’s longtime political manager, Charlie Bell. He was a longtime lobbyist and campaign consultant who may have known the state even better than Baring.
Baring also took care of the home folks. The line about him was that nobody liked him but the voters — especially rural voters. He tended to constituent service, as it’s now called. He sent seeds to Nevadans so they could plant gardens, and they knew those vegetables and flowers bloomed because of Baring.
But Baring turned against President John Kennedy’s New Frontier, and eventually opposed Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. Baring proclaimed himself a Jeffersonian States’ Rights Democrat. He accused JFK and LBJ of communist leanings.
In 1962, Democrats, especially from southern Nevada, began trying to unseat him. The first was John Mendoza, later a longtime judge. Ralph Denton tried twice and came closer than anyone else would for many years. Clark County health officer Otto Ravenholt made an effort, as did longtime activist and state official Dick Ham. Some Nevada Republicans would switch to vote for Baring in the primary, and many of them supported him in the general election.
In 1972, it would be Jim Bilbray’s turn. He was a Las Vegan, the son of a longtime county assessor, and a university regent.
But the tide turned. Baring and Bell had a falling-out, and Bell worked for Bilbray. Southern Nevada had been growing faster than anywhere else in the state. That September 5, the vote showed Baring winning every county but Washoe and Clark. Bilbray won statewide by about four thousand, six hundred votes — and he won Clark by more than eight thousand. It clearly turned the tide.
On the Republican side, the primary winner was David Towell, who lived in Gardnerville and was in the real estate business. He had been active in the party, but wasn’t that well known. It helped him that Richard Nixon was going to carry the state easily for the Republican Party. It also helped him that the conservative Democrats who liked Baring were out to defeat Bilbray.
And they did. Bilbray still carried Clark County, as well as Lincoln. But Washoe County went strong for Towell, who won every other county. He served one term in Congress, then lost his reelection bid to Jim Santini, a Clark County judge. Bilbray would return to the House in the 1986 election and serve four terms — the same number Santini went on to serve before another controversial primary. We’ll talk about that one next time.