Former state Sen. Bob Beers has agreed to settle a lawsuit he filed against the Nevada Democratic Party stemming from the 2008 election, which he lost, the Nevada News Bureau reports.
The Democratic Party alleged in a flier in 2008 that Beers was under review by the state Ethics Commission, which he was not. The flier likely contributed to Beers’s narrow loss to now-state Sen. Allison Copening.
“I hope out of this comes an increasing awareness that the Nevada State Democratic Party, at least here at a local level, will flat out lie to win an election,” Beers said.
Unlike, of course, Republicans, who would never lie to win an election.
Ironically, Beers himself got in trouble for allegedly lying in a flier early in his political career. The state Ethics Commission sought to punish Beers for a 2002 flier in an Assembly race that Beers’s opponent said was false.
But that case ended in Beers’s vindication, after a federal court struck down a state law that prohibited making “false statements” in elections.
Phoebe Sweet, spokeswoman for the Democratic Party, told the Nevada News Bureau the party was moving to dismiss a nuisance lawsuit.
“If we settle, we will be closing the books on a frivolous lawsuit brought by former Sen. Bob Beers,” she said. “We are happy to make a contribution to a charity and give Sen. Beers the statement he feels he needs to move forward and ‘clear his name.’ Although if Sen. Beers is so interested in name-clearing, he should apologize to Sen. Allison Copening. Beers admitted in his deposition that he filed a lawsuit against her during the 2008 campaign with absolutely no evidence of any wrongdoing on her part. The Nevada Democratic Party stands by its direct mail against Sen. Beers.”
Ah, but if the party stands by its direct mail against Beers, why did it settle just as the senator’s lawyers were about to inquire into the political strategy behind the mail? And just because the party — and not Copening herself — was behind the offending mailer, does anybody think that she’d have stopped it if she could?
Just asking.
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