First, the twang—it's a Southern accent, direct from Georgia. Countrified, curved, down-home, it says, I'm just a good ol' girl; I have a past, roots, a family; it says, whether it's true or not, I've had bourbon with the boys on the back porch, I've ridden in the bed of a pickup truck, and I'm not unlikely to go barefoot in the yard. It says, I may have debuted as an educated Southern Belle with my hair built perfectly and hands folded, but I'm more likely, underneath makeup and hair spray and good tidings, to cuss like a trucker and holler like Norma Rae. It adds a memorable dimension to a Nevada politician on a flat western landscape full of vapid, voiceless public officials. It's Dina Titus' calling card.
On this January day, she's walking hard and fast around the outside corner of the UNLV library. She's late for an appointment with a reporter: The governor called her this morning to talk about his car registration refund plan as it went public; her new office in the UNLV political-science department isn't fully constructed yet, even as the semester starts, so she's taken to meeting in the back of the library today.
The campus is like Nevada itself, half-old, half-new. There are cramped buildings being torn down as sleek new ones are put up; it's a construction site as much as an institution for higher learning. Men in hard hats slog next to students looking toward the future, and Dina Titus walks the middle ground perfectly here. At 54, a 27-year veteran on this campus, she is also the state Senate minority leader— "one the smartest, savviest people in Carson City," according to pundit Jon Ralston—a tough lawmaker known for pushing controlled growth planning, conservation efforts and education funding—and a woman who is looking toward the future with willful, improbable ambition: She wants to be the next governor of Nevada, the first woman ever to hold that office.
"This is just something I want to do," she says. "It's really the only job worth having. Nobody wants to be secretary of state or lieutenant governor, I mean who wants to do that?"
She's prone to these sorts of statements, blunt and content-efficient in a manner that most politicians aren't likely to employ; she knows it's a trait that's likely to get her in trouble, but also one that, like her accent, contributes to an image that's a shade or two more real than the average elected official. "So I tend to be pretty plainspoken. I don't use a lot of political euphemisms. At least people know what they're going to get from me."
"You never have to wonder where Dina stands on an issue," says Assembly Speaker Richard Perkins, D-Henderson, and an opponent in the gubernatorial primary. "Dina wears her emotions very outwardly. It makes for character, certainly. But it can create political liabilities, as well."
The room in the back of the library is quiet and plain, a vacuum from the havoc going on outside. Titus is petite and blonde, well-groomed and lightly weathered, dressed in a mid-length black leather jacket over a long skirt and sweater, operating quite comfortably in this sort of vacuum—her interior voice much louder than the thousands of influences on the outside. Such is the nature of ambition.
"I'm not sure this state is willing to elect a liberal woman from the South as governor," says Ralston. "But Titus is frustrated by the good old boys anointing good old boys and may see it through."
Nevada has never had a female governor. Former Las Vegas Mayor Jan Jones ran in 1998, securing the Democratic primary but losing to Kenny Guinn. (Lt. Gov. Lorraine Hunt is also eyeing the race this time.) Only nine states currently have a female governor, so Nevada isn't especially outside the mainstream on that score. But this is a state of contradictions, and the role of women here is "schizophrenic," Titus says, from sex object to candidate for governor. And, the influx of newcomers notwithstanding, the circles of power are still small and efficacy in state and local government still springs from earned equity in the club, which Dina Titus says is largely an old-boys network—a network she's not in, not entirely.
"The elite circles in Nevada are very small and intertwined. Even with the population growth, the state is still a small town," she says. "I'm not a part of the cigar and golf group, but I think I've gotten respect from them." To this she adds, in perfect Dina Titus front-porch rapport, "Now, I don't own a golf club, but I do own a gun."
She's previously passed over the idea of running for Congress or governor. In 2002, she set her eyes on Dario Herrera's open County Commission seat, but Rory Reid, son of Harry, was a shoo-in. (Harry had also thrown his support to Herrera.) The work of influential backers, not of public sentiment, is a theme that she's run up against time and time again.
Now she says she's not interested in either the county or Congress. "I think I'm too old to be in Congress."
Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio, R-Reno, who has tangled with Titus in every legislative session, says he doesn't think there is an old-boys network specific to gender in Nevada. "I don't think that's a factor anymore. Women are involved in all levels of politics here," says Raggio.
"The group of people in Nevada who tend to have influence over these decisions—I think it's upsetting to her that these types of folks don't tend to back her," says Perkins. "It goes back to how she approaches issues very intensely, the way she speaks emotionally."
"She is also term-limited and this (her run for governor) is an ‘up or out' move," Ralston says. For Titus, it might be now or never.
• • •
A week later, another morning campus walk. Classes have started and the Wright building is in use, but construction workers are still finishing the stairwells and sidewalks. Her new office is not a whole lot different than her old one—tight, lined with books, window looking onto a brick wall—but when the chairman of the political-science department gives her the nickel tour of the rest of the second floor, she looks into the giant new conference room—a polished table that seats 18 or more—and jokes, "Holey moley, I hope the taxpayers don't see this, they'll think we spent too much money."
As she walks through the hallway with the chairman, a small group of students seems to multiply behind her like a line of baby quail. Eventually, they follow her into that conference room, where she sits them down and begins to brief them on what it's like to be in Carson City; these young men and women are goinTg to be legislative interns this spring and Titus has long been the supervisor of the interns.
"If you get in trouble up there, it will take at most one hour for me to find out. You'll be under a microscope, and they'll call me," she tells the four early-twentysomethings sitting at the table. They smile and chuckle; teaching is Titus' first love, and it shows in her easy rapport with the students. She explains their assignments, their wardrobe expectations—"We don't want a lot of navels hanging out"—and then assures them if they need anything, to call her day or night.
"There are rumors that you're not going to run for governor," one of the students asks. "Is that true?"
"They would like to talk me out of it," she says. "But they can't."
• • •
Titus is from Tifton, a small south Georgia town where her Greek relatives were die-hard FDR supporters, her grandfather a restaurant owner and her father a one-time city council candidate. This background, she notes, gives her an understanding not only of small towns—which aids in relating to the concerns of rural Nevadans—but also of immigrant cultures of all sorts—which aids in relating to the concerns of a growing demographic here.
She is nimble in this process of reviewing her life and fitting its pieces into a new structure, that of a statewide candidate, that of a leader of more than District 7 in Las Vegas or even of the Senate Democrats.
She was first tapped to run for state senate in 1988, when "the person the good ol' boys had chosen to run ran off with his girlfriend."
"I figured, I teach this, I study it —what the hell? It will be a good experience. But once you sign on the line, you're in it to win.
"I did win. Nobody thought I would, but I did." It's an anecdote that may sum up her motive in many situations—curiosity followed by competitiveness. "Dina is a tough opponent," says Raggio. "That (legislative battling) is not a problem for her. She gets respect." In 1993, she became Senate minority leader and has represented the loyal opposition ever since. That is, in fact, the source of some of her restlessness: In all of this time spent in politics, Titus has never been in the majority. "Her biggest liability is the things that life in the minority do to you: It makes you testy and it never ends," Sen. Bob Beers, R-Vegas, says. "When you're in the majority, you nod sagely and do what you want anyway. When you're in the minority, you frantically rail and get very little done."
But she has gotten some things done. In a long political career, she's been involved in an endless variety of legislative works, known for her pet projects of animal-protection issues and helping the disabled; but more heavily for her attention to growth issues in Southern Nevada. Her 1997 Ring Around the Valley proposal, which would have restricted development in the outlying Vegas areas, has become nearly synonymous with the beginning of growth planning in Southern Nevada.
"I don't mean to sound immodest but I started the debate on smart growth," she says. "The public loved it. But developers killed it."
Titus later authored Nevada's law to protect Red Rock Canyon from encroaching development, and has become a go-to voice in fighting for "smart growth" policies espousing a philosophy that "quality of life has got to be the main concern in transportation and land use."
"I saved Red Rock from development. I hope that will be my legacy," she says.
She has her master's degree from the University of Georgia and her Ph.D. from Florida State University; she's written books—most notably Bombs in the Backyard: Atomic Testing and American Politics, and she's been well-regarded in her community—readers of the Las Vegas Review-Journal selected her as their Favorite Female Las Vegan in 1997 and 1999. The Nevada Test Site Museum overseers named its reading room the Dina Titus Reading Room because of her book and research into the test site, a project which began when she worked for U.S. Sen. Howard Cannon.
In the past, as an advocate for Southern Nevada, she tweaked the noses of Northern Nevadans once or twice, and working for UNLV in a state where the two universities are financial rivals politically feeds that divide. But she's feeling out the new image now, planning to do a little courting of the north in her off-time during the session (which starts February 7). And, in this quest to slightly reconfigure and expand her political persona, her background offers premium brick and mortar: After those small-town Southern and Greek roots, she landed at the prestigious Virginia College of William & Mary (without ever graduating high school), where she flourished in what she calls the "revolutionary years"—political melee and anti-war protests right there near the nation's capital. It served to fuel her interest in politics, a subject which she frequently tells her UNLV students is related to every aspect of their lives. "I challenge them to tell me what part of their life isn't affected by government somehow. I'm a political junkie, and I'm amazed that anybody can find politics boring." Many of her students don't, and many end up in public office themselves—her other-side-of-the-aisle sparring partner Beers, in fact, distinguishes himself as "one of the few people in Nevada who didn't take political science from her."
• • •
Some political strategists put the cost of winning the Nevada gubernatorial, for a Democrat with a primary battle, at as much as $8 million. Titus has banked, well, something less than a fraction of a fraction of that.
"I am not sure she can raise the money," says Ralston. "Nor am I sure she has the relationships with the institutional players to gather support. There are many who think she will see the writing on the wall and recede, but I'm not so sure. She is tough and unwilling to simply give in."
Titus tallies up her supporters: Voters ranging from liberal Democrats to senior citizens. "I've got women, I've got environmentalists backing me—I think I energize the base. And I'm so clean ethically, they've got nothing on me." Indeed, Titus was questioned about her UNLV position in the double-dipping controversy, but she has always taken unpaid leave for the semester she works in Carson City.
"She is feisty and always ready with a quip—she is by far the most dynamic of the candidates," Ralston says. "But her prickliness and her lack of a self-editing mechanism have caused her problems in the past ... as for her locking horns, she has done so openly with GOP leaders and at times with the development and gaming industries."
Titus says she's ready for the challenge, although fund-raising is her other Achilles heel: "You don't walk the districts anymore, that's the difference. It's harder and harder to walk the districts, so much is gated, people don't like to open their doors. You have to hire consultants. I got $80,000 in my first race, and I was flabbergasted. I'd never seen $80,000 before.
"You have to make calls. You have to ask, you have to sell yourself, brag about yourself. I don't like it, it's hard to do. ... The main thing is, they have to know you've got your shit together. They want to know where you are and know that they'll get a straight answer. I can give them that. For example, gaming supports me but I'm not seen as being in gaming's pocket, but they know they'll get a straight answer from me."
At this stage, the man picked to win the 2006 governor race is Republican U.S. Rep. Jim Gibbons.
• • •
After completing her education, Titus landed the job teaching at UNLV in 1977 and moved to Vegas. She's been a professor ever since, taking leave every other spring for her service in Carson City. "In all the years I've been a teacher, I've never had a student complain." (Democratic primary rival Richard Perkins was one of her students. Was he a good student? "Yes, yes he was." To Perkins: So her classes inspired you to get into politics? "No, I was already interested in politics when I took her classes, but I enjoyed them; yes, she's a good professor." This guarded public cordiality will likely be difficult to maintain as they plod their way through the session as party colleagues and primary rivals.)
Shortly after beginning work at UNLV, Titus found herself eyeing a history professor who frequently passed by her office—at least that's how they tell it now, she and her husband Tom Wright, that history professor, standing together in the new Wright building, named for his father John S. Wright—and one day he asked her if she would like to get a Coke in the student union.
"Half of the history department followed us over there," Titus says. They've been married for 25 years now. Wright has movie-star good looks—he's tall and fit and well-groomed with a square jaw and a warm demeanor. Because of his academic focus, the two of them frequent Latin America to explore its history; they've just returned from a romantic getaway to Rome, where they stayed in a boutique hotel two blocks from the Pantheon.
And, she says, her trips with Tom also enlighten her to other cultures, which helps her understand different cultures in Nevada. This habit of earmarking life experiences as campaign slogans is not insincere, it comes out right as she's thinking it, it's the work of a head that won't turn off and doesn't self-edit terribly zealously; she's categorizing, strategizing, anticipating how these experiences will play; it's as if she's designing her campaign as she carries on an interview, while answering the phone, while taking a minute to answer a student's question. Multitasking in the extreme; plotting the unfinished.
And it's a prolific habit, this crushing of her past into perfect bites:
After discussing her husband, she pulls this out: "I consider myself moderate," she says. "Some will call me liberal. But sometimes I like to say that I'm actually very conservative: I've had the same job and the same husband and the same house and the same hairdo for 25 years."
It's got a nice ring to it. You can bet she'll use that one again.
• • •
Dina Titus comes to the door of her house in stocking feet. She lives in an older ranch-style house in a nice neighborhood squeezed between some un-nice neighborhoods just east of UNLV's campus. The front walk to her doorway is overgrown with vegetation, visitors have to lean down to walk through a plant tunnel to get to the front door. She's not quite ready for company yet, so she leads the guests into the living room and returns to her bedroom.
Off the living room is her nook of an office, covered in books and collectibles from her travels, teeny nativity scenes and Day of the Dead figurines, a picture of her and Bill Clinton, a top bookshelf full of the complete Nevada Revised Statutes.
When she emerges in a bright salmon-colored business suit and still no shoes, she sits down on the sofa to be videotaped for the Vegas Centennial's celebration of Nevada's powerful women. The producer asks her how she would prefer to be titled—lawmaker, professor, politician?
"Public servant," she says.
On with the camera, and on with a one-woman show: Titus succinctly runs through a novel of a life, "I'm a GRITS—that's a Girl Raised In The South," in a fine display of both charm and political savvy, a way of delivering a speech that doesn't seem like a speech, a skill she's perfected in the classroom.
From "I never really liked [high] school" to "I think my reputation is that I'm a fighter" to "When there's a cause that I feel is just, I just don't give up," she fills up her 30-minute segment with ease.
Afterward, she pulls out two pictures for show-and-tell. One is of her and her husband; it says, "25 years, Tom and Dina" and shows them once as thirtysomethings, and once now, their faces a little older but no less joyful. The other is of her and Robert Redford. It's dreamy. It's very nearly romantic. They're sitting on chairs at the environmental rally in Vegas last fall, and Redford is eyeing her with what look like adoring eyes. "He looked 65, but he looked good," she says, rolling her eyes like a schoolgirl.
It's this one that she holds up when she talks about what her legacy will be, Red Rock. But there's something more than Red Rock in play here—this is a picture of a well-loved older actor, a legend, the kind of figure that a girl in the 1970s would have pined for, would have dreamed of knowing. It's a measure of achieving dreams. And it's set against a political backdrop of preservation, of warding off the ruin of one of nature's most beautiful gifts, Red Rock, something that was once beautiful and strong enough to inspire confidence rather than to require protecting. There's a feeling of time passing here, and of a woman who isn't content to sit back and watch it go.
• • •
This session, a fat session in which she and Perkins will be pressing to get it done in 120 days and resume fund-raising for their gubernatorial bids (rules require them to wait till 30 days after the session to do so), she's got a high-profile proposition to freeze property taxes at 2004 levels until a thorough solution to escalating land values can be developed, and has put herself on the Senate Finance Committee for the first time to "learn the budget better to prepare for being governor."
She's cagey about her specific Democratic platform for governor, about her vision for Nevada, opting to hold out a while longer before unveiling her entire set of goals for the state. But planning is underway, she says.
Beers sums up Titus' legislative impact and gubernatorial prospects this way: "She's a worthy opponent and we frequently have different ideas about what's the best course for our state, but she defends her point of view passionately and with skill. Of course, she's still wrong ...
"But she's a feisty, passionate advocate, and that's the kind of people you want to have in leadership."
At the capital every other spring, she rents a house near the governor's mansion. Kenny Guinn goes jogging by. Once in a while, he'll stop in for a beer. Other times, she jokes, she tries to hide the particular political operatives who happen to be visiting to work on political issues so that Guinn doesn't see them. Politics is cozy. Sometimes too cozy for Titus.
"I'll tell you this, though. When I get into the governor's mansion, I'll have a little neighborhood party. It's a wonderful little neighborhood."
• • •
At 3:27:22 p.m. on a Thursday, Dina Titus wheels her green Lincoln into the paved driveway of KLAV radio in a house-turned-broadcasting station in a neighborhood shadowed by the Stratosphere. She goes on the air at 3:30, which gives her plenty of time to run to the bathroom before taking her chair in the tiny radio booth with a sound man and two hosts of Building Las Vegas, a show about construction. Titus is a regular.
"My caucus in the Senate is stronger than it's ever been. I'm real pleased," she tells the hosts. She's bright and fiery, the hosts remark that she's one of their favorite guests, right up there with Oscar Goodman, because both can carry a conversation pretty much on their own. A half hour's worth of legislative shop talk passes like a quick breeze. She is smart, driven, an ambitious woman in a state that's never elected a woman to lead it.
Years ago, Titus learned one of the basic rules of effective politics: "Never back someone into a corner—it forces them to come out fighting." What if she's done that to herself? What if that explains everything?