The Lady, the Law, and the Very Flexible Fence

Nevada comes blessed with a political class that can spot a principle at fifty yards, provided it is not moving and does not require any inconvenience to capture.

Enter Madam Nicole Cannizzaro, who aspires to become the state’s chief law officer, a position traditionally tasked with enforcing the law. Though in recent years it has been repurposed in some quarters as a sort of political Swiss Army knife, useful for cutting, prying, and occasionally sawing off the limb one is sitting on.

She has been good enough to announce her intentions in advance, which saves the voter from the labor of guessing. Her campaign opens by taking a stout swing at federal immigration enforcement and election security, those twin devils of modern politics, which are said to cause great distress when applied and even greater distress when not.

On immigration, she warns of a “public safety crisis,” a phrase that suits any occasion, like a borrowed coat. Her remedy is to reduce enforcement, on the theory, apparently, that fewer arrests will produce more safety, much as fewer umbrellas improve a rainstorm.

Now, it is one thing to hold such views; it is another to be handed the badge and keys to the evidence locker while holding them. The office she seeks is not a debating society.

It has levers, real ones, that can slow, redirect, or outright obstruct federal efforts. It is not a rumor whispered over whiskey; it is the campaign platform, printed plainly.

As for elections, Madam has shown affection for arrangements that are easy to operate and difficult to question. Mail ballots bloom like desert flowers, voter rolls grow comfortably padded, and any attempt to tidy them becomes a personal affront to democracy itself. One gathers that the ideal election is one in which participation is limitless and verification is considered rude.

But the finest exhibit in this traveling show is her previous engagement with civil asset forfeiture, a practice so beloved by government that it allows officials to seize property without proving anything unlawful. It is a policy that manages to offend anyone who enjoys keeping their money and wallet.

A reform bill sailed through the Assembly with the sort of bipartisan cheer usually reserved for parades. It then arrived in the Senate Judiciary Committee, where Madam allowed the bill to expire quietly, as many good ideas do when they meet a well-placed Chair.

At the time, she also held the title deputy district attorney, working for an office that benefits from the very forfeitures she declined to restrain. This arrangement was later found unconstitutional by the Nevada Supreme Court, which is the judiciary’s polite way of saying, “You cannot do that, no matter how convenient it may be.”

She resigned the conflicting post, though not, one suspects, from an excess of free time.

Meanwhile, records suggest that the current Attorney General’s office, the one she hopes to inherit, is in cahoots with an outside organization devoted to shaping election-related legal battles across the Republic. Emails exchanged, meetings attended, and strategies discussed.

It was all very collegial, like a quilting circle, except the quilts were lawsuits and the patches were political opponents. When law enforcement begins coordinating its thinking with advocacy groups, the lines between neutral application and selective enthusiasm become suspect.

And here lies the nub of the matter. The Attorney General is not merely a lawyer; he or she is the state’s chief interpreter of the law and how best to enforce it.

In steady hands, it is a shield. In ambitious ones, it may become a cudgel.

Madam Cannizzaro provides a record advertising a fondness for expansive power when it serves, a reluctance to restrain it when it benefits the state, and a willingness to contest federal authority when it disagrees with her politics.

The voter, standing at the ballot box, will face a simple choice dressed in complicated language as to whether the law should behave like a fence, fixed, impartial, and equally inconvenient to all, or like a gate, opening wide for friends and sticking fast for everyone else.

Nevada has tried both, and the results have been instructive.