Awhile back, I got a call from someone supporting the unsuccessful recall of sullied Storey County Sheriff Gerald Cook Antinoro. (Barbwire 10-31-2014 et seq.)

His detractors were researching if there had ever been a sheriff ousted in Nevada history or if theirs would be the first.

I gave them a cold shower. Not only was it not the first, but fleshmonger Dennis Hof, a 2018 Republican nominee for Nevada State Assembly, is nowhere near the first of his profession to get that far.

The precedents lie in sprawling Nye County, most famous these days for solar energy arrays. Four decades ago, sunshine did not illuminate Nye's dark corners.

In 1967, Beverly Harrell opened Cottontail Ranch in southern Nye, one of the closest brothels to Las Vegas.

After multiple brushes with the Bureau of Land Management, she decided to run for Nevada State Assembly. It became Nevada's second biggest political story of 1974, eclipsed only by former Republican Gov. Paul Laxalt's upset defeat of Lt. Governor Harry Reid for the seat of legendary Sen. Alan Bible. In the year of Watergate, even.

I met Ms. Harrell only once when she and a very, ahem, exotic entourage arrived in a huge motorhome for an interview at Reno's KTVN TV-2.

Not long before the election, I discussed that race with a top gun lawyer.

"She's going to win," he said. "My mom lives down there where everybody hates the BLM and they're going to send her to Carson City hating the BLM."

News crews had an excess of volunteers wanting to cover it. Mme. Beverly had promised all the guys "open house" if she won.

A day or two after the November election, I got a call from a highly placed Las Vegas Democrat.

"How much did Beverly Harrell win by?"

"She didn't," I replied.

"Not a chance," said the heavy hitter. "Those bastards stole it from her."

Thereby hangs a tale. Or two. Or three.

The Nye results were not official by the morning after because one ballot box from an outlying area had mysteriously gone missing while traveling through the rural night.

When the votes were finally counted, an obscure garage owner from Hawthorne in Mineral County was the upset winner.

I called State Sen. Richard Bryan, D-LV, who had heard the same thing and said he'd look into it. Bryan had narrowly lost to incumbent Attorney General Robert List in a year when Republicans were dropping like flies.

In the early 1980s, investigative reporter Jeanie Kasindorf wrote a story for New West magazine which she eventually turned into a 1985 book, "The Nye County Brothel Wars."

It had everything a soap opera required: Sex, drugs, corruption, murder and mayhem.

It became a sanitized 1981 TV movie ("Incident at Crestridge") starring Oscar-nominee Eileen Brennan ("Private Benjamin", "The Sting") as a sheriff trying to clean up the "massage parlor" business in rural Wyoming. (Nevada gets no respect.)

Pernell Roberts ("Bonanza", "Trapper John, MD") played a corrupt mayor who decides the sheriff is bad for business and starts a recall. His henchmen stuff the ballot box and the sheriff loses, but not until a "masseuse" who was leaking info to the sheriff dies in a mysterious car accident.

The recall part, at least, was true. Nye County Sheriff Joni Wines was indeed ousted after about 18 months on the job and is a central figure in Kasindorf's research.

Margarita-swilling former Chicken Ranch brothel owner Walter Plankinton, played by a lookalike in the watered-down movie, ran for assembly in 1982.

The good ole boys on the Nye County Brothel Board tried to shut Plankinton down for purportedly illegally "advertising" his business.

"Plankinton's appearance on a TV show, his interviews with two publications and the use of the brothel's name in a Las Vegas casino show was tantamount to advertising," the Reno Gazette-Journal reported on July 21, 1982. (Sound familiar?)

The Chicken Ranch was closed for six weeks until U.S. District Judge Harry Claiborne overturned the revocation on First Amendment grounds in May of 1981.

Plankinton was merely following the media hustling playbook written by former Mustang Ranch proprietor Joe Conforte and since copied by Mr. Hof.

He has already defeated the incumbent Republican in the primary and is now the favorite to win the seat in November. Current Mustang owner Lance Gilman now sits on the Storey County Commission. The Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center (aka TRIC) boss has become borderline respectable as madcap Sheriff Cook-Antinoro's most powerful enemy.

The flesh peddler continuum is thus set for the next step on the path to legitimacy.

Do they still use paper ballots in Nye County?

Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno. (Pardon my Spanglish.)
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Andrew Barbano is a 49-year Nevadan, executive producer of Nevada's annual César Chávez Day celebration, first vice-president and political action chair of the Reno-Sparks NAACP, labor/consumer/civil rights advocate, member of Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO and editor of NevadaLabor.com and BallotBoxing.US and SenJoeNeal.org and DoctorLawyerWatch.com/ As always, his opinions are strictly his own. Check local listings for other Nevada cable systems. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since 1988 and received its 8th Nevada Press Association award and 5th first-place at the 30 Sept. 2017 NPA annual convention in Carson City. (That trophy and about six bucks will get you a Latte Mocha Cotsafracas Chingade at just about any Starbux worldwide, guaranteed.)

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