Ed Goedhart Ed Higbee Jr. John Brown Advertisement

Three Republicans will compete in the Tuesday primary in the Nevada Assembly District 36 race.

The winner will face the winner of the Democratic primary, also a three-way race, and a candidate from the Independent American Party, in the Nov. 7 general election.

District 36 represents a vast area of Nevada, from Pahrump to Fallon to Alamo.

Ed Goedhart, 44, is the manager of the Ponderosa Dairy. He also farms 100 acres of alfalfa.

Goedhart graduated with a degree in business and accounting from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich., and came to Southern Nevada in January 1997. He served three terms on the Amargosa Valley Town Advisory Board.

Goedhart is a former chairman of the Science and Technology Regional Development Corp., which implemented the beginnings of an industrial park at the intersection of Highways 95 and 373. Goedhart also served two terms on the Southern Nye County Conservation District.

Goedhart said he hasn't been elected to office but has an extensive background in the happenings in southern Nye County. As manager of a diary, Goedhart said he has had to deal with federal issues, buying water rights and dealing with federal entities.

"As it relates to Pahrump, we're going to look at infrastructure concerns relating to roads, highways, traffic signals and the water and sewer portion long range," Goedhart said of the upcoming session. "I believe that the different counties in this district, it's incumbent on them to develop long-range plans to protect and utilize this resource and keep it under county control."

The law should be changed requiring water rights holders to prove their water rights every five years or lose them, Goedhart said.

"In Pahrump that doesn't make sense to me," Goedhart said. "It doesn't make sense for me to waste water in order to hold onto your water rights."

But entities like the Las Vegas Water Authority should be limited on how long their can lock up water in other basins without doing something with it, he said.

Rural counties, which he said are over 90 percent under federal management, need to develop their own public lands plan, he said.

"You can talk economic development until you're blue in the face, but if you don't take into that discussion available land and water you're going to go nowhere," Goedhart said.

Twenty percent of Nevada's power has to come from green energy by 2015, he said. Parts of his district, perhaps some federal land, could be carved out for solar or wind projects. Goedhart said he's involved with a firm named Solargenics, which has plans for a solar power project on 320 acres on the north side of Mecca Road in Amargosa Valley.

"We've had some challenges trying to draft an ordinance trying to protect women and children against sexual predators and I believe there's something we can do on a state level to help out the community," Goedhart said.

The state needs to strengthen the ethics commission, which has a backlog of 80 complaints, he said. The commission should be required to act on a complaint within 45 days.

Goedhart said some people who don't like the dairy may not vote for him. "There will be a few people that don't like farming and ranching and dairies," he said.

"I think we need someone in office who meets a payroll every week and knows how to live within a budget," Goedhart said. "I take the word public servant to heart. I have a lot of bosses. I have 60,000 constituents. I'm going to have 60,000 bosses."

Ed Higbee Jr., 52, of Alamo, was raised in Lincoln County, went to Southern Utah University and has a ranch in Pahranagat Valley. Higbee has also supervised a Nevada Department of Transportation road crew for 29 years. He also has been involved in coaching middle school basketball and Little League baseball.

Higbee said his father was a Lincoln County commissioner for 20 years. After raising seven children, he feels he has time for politics himself.

"I believe in the Constitution and I believe it's under assault in this day and age," Higbee said. "The major right I think we're under assault is private property. You've got environmentalists, they're using the endangered species laws to try to take over private property rights. You've got big government, the BLM, U.S. Forest Service, all these big agencies that have power behind them, they claim."

Higbee said besides protecting property rights, he would encourage the BLM to put more land up for disposal.

There have to be laws protecting existing water rights, he said.

"Nobody knows how much water is in the aquifer under District 36," Higbee said. "There's also private property rights involved. You have some people that own water; they ought to be able to do what they want if they own the water rights."

Higbee said schools need to be funded well, but decisions about what to teach and how to spend the money should be made at the local level.

Higbee said people in the district are divided on the Yucca Mountain project. "Wherever it goes through District 36, which it will do, everything has to be mitigated up to the standards of each person that's going to deal with it along the way."

Higbee would like to introduce a bill requiring high school students to study the Constitution at least three years.

"I would like to see a bill introduced in the legislature that would put a freeze on fees and taxes for two years. That's one reason that I am running for office. I think that government is getting a little bit too big and too powerful and too much money."

Higbee said a call from an assemblyman would be able to solve traffic problems in Pahrump. He said there have to be some conservation plans in Pahrump where there are concerns about a dropping water table.

Higbee said he will do well, even though he's from more remote Lincoln County, adding he's been in television debates with his Republican party opponents.

John Brown, 82, moved to Pahrump in October 2004. He is a retired salesman for Gray Bar Electric Co. in South San Francisco, where he said he traveled 50,000 miles per year.

He has taken courses at the Community College of Southern Nevada, including a two-year Spanish course, a math course and guitar.

Brown is a U.S. Navy veteran of World War II and the Korean War. He ran for the U.S. Senate in California four times and said he received about 2 percent of the vote.

"I don't take any money from anybody. I think money has replaced principle in politics and I just think that's disgusting," Brown said.

"We've got to get rid of the permanent Congress. I'm a nut about that, and I carry uncirculated $2 bills with Thomas Jefferson on the front and the Declaration of Independence on the back," he said. "The entrepreneur is a major element in our society and I'm a capitalist through and through. I'm very conservative. I believe abortion is murder.

"I would challenge every bit of legislation and say, 'Don't we have some laws on the books today in that category?' And I think we need somebody to stop the legislative process and I think that government governs best that governs least."

Brown said there are so many laws on the books, Sheriff Tony DeMeo doesn't know what to enforce.