The race to represent District A on the Clark County Commission is expected to be very close.
Of 200,000 registered voters in the district, about 61,000 are Democrats and 54,000 are Republicans. This includes some of the southwestern part of the county. It includes Laughlin and the fast-growing south end of the Las Vegas Strip. Michael Naft, a Democrat, has held that seat since 2019. He’ll face Republican Ryan Hamilton in November.
Both men recently talked to KNPR's State of Nevada, addressing traffic issues, homelessness and more.
Naft said one of the things he’s most proud of is changing the terms of agreements with private ambulance companies, which has led to faster response times.
“We’re holding our contractors accountable … and prioritizing speed. The rapidness to which our private ambulance companies respond is often the difference between life and death.”
Naft was instrumental in getting the county to form the Office of Traffic Safety almost three years ago.
“It’s so important to me because we’re literally losing hundreds of people a year to traffic fatalities,” Naft said. The rate of pedestrians hit and killed by vehicles has risen at the rate of 53% over the first six months of this year. Through June 52 people were hit and killed versus 34 last year.
Naft added that even people not involved in those accidents pay for it, as insurance companies raise rates.
He added that he would support a push by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department to try a pilot project to put traffic cameras on red lights, as running red lights is seen as a major issue by police and traffic safety experts.
“I think they can be done equitably,” he said. “And I think you see, both across the country and around the world, these technologies save lives, and they also can be attributed to truly improving the quality of life for communities.”
Hamilton said he is not in favor of red-light cameras “right now.” Instead, he wants to see more coordination between city, county, state and federal agencies who order road repair and construction, so that when one road closes or is narrowed, other arterials aren’t being worked on at the same time.
“My first reaction is, what can the county do to make it easier out on the roads?” he said. “And one of the things that they can do is apply a little bit more foresight and planning with the deployment of some of these closures, and I think that would go a long way to reducing attitudes, you know, bad attitudes on the road.”
Both Naft and Hamilton agreed the unhoused and the lack of affordable housing is a major problem. A recent homeless count found a 20% increase in the number of unhoused since last year.
Naft said there’s no single solution “but you can’t just give up and throw your hands up, because this is something that impacts everybody’s quality of life.”
He touts the Clark County Community Land Trust, which took applications for the first time this year. The Trust Community Land Trust for affordable home ownership. “It’s something that will, no doubt, help people not just one moment in time, but actually develop equity of their own.”
Naft added that the county’s program to help provide affordable senior housing just got off the ground but already has a waiting list.
To run for the District A seat, Hamilton took a leave of absence from Vegas Stronger, an organization that seeks to reduce homelessness by attacking its root causes.
“We can assertively redirect people toward mental health treatment, towards substance abuse/ disorder treatment, and resolve a lot of these homeless cases,” he said. “They're actually not homeless for an economic reason, but because they have a long-standing, treatment-resistant drug addiction or a mental health issue … that is exacerbated, obviously, by difficult economic circumstances.
“It should be the county's business to make sure that every (service) that they offer, every psychiatrist time slot that they have is full, to give these people an opportunity to move off the streets.”
