The candidate spotlight: Kara Jenkins for Las Vegas mayor

Help The Warning to identify and feature the best and brightest candidates for political office

Because of what will happen tomorrow and the next day it is difficult to know where the unspooling will end and what the unraveling will bring. There are ominous indicators.

Last week, a Rasmussen Reports poll found that 41 percent of likely voters believe that the United States is likely to experience a second civil war within in the next five years.

What is the remedy?

Last year, I was sitting on a patio near the beach in Southern California with a friend, who was lamenting the state of politics in America and wondering what could be done. We bantered back and forth, and touched on all the barriers to a politics of normalcy, which is an obvious prerequisite towards lowering the temperature and navigating towards a better path that solves problems, creates opportunities and builds a better future.

The conversation turned towards an inescapable and sad reality of this moment in American life, politics and culture, where the low and the tawdry are rocket fuel to success.

How else can anyone explain that the whole country knows who Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene are, but have no idea who Abigail Spanberger, Colin Allred and Mikie Sherill are?

I asked my friend if he would ever run for political office, and he laughed out loud and said, “Of course not!”

I asked him another set of questions.

I observed that it was nice out near the beach, and asked him if he thought our spot on the deck was pretty perfect.

He said, “Absolutely.”

I asked him what we would do if 150 crazy people — a mix of deranged narcissists, political extremists, weirdos, conspiracy theorists and other assorted friends of theirs — showed up suddenly on the perfect deck.

I wanted to know if he thought we’d fight with them or leave.

 “Obviously,” I told him, “we would leave”. He agreed. Crazy people make normal people want to leave.

This dynamic explains why American politics is so broken.

Who has time to spend arguing over conspiracy theories about nonsense with some blustering martinet or incandescent fool about meaningless idiocy week in week out at the local party meetings?

The system has become a repellent to normalcy. It wasn’t always so, but public service has become ridiculed, despised and disrespected. It is a profession that guarantees threats, abuse, degradations of all manner, which accumulate in the open, along with a spirit of ingratitude as you seek to serve the public and do some good for your community, town, city, county, state, or nation.

Yet, our way of life is dependent on the concept of public service. Elections decide how we apportion power within our society and political system. They are sustained by candidates who provide choices in a system in which individual liberties are beyond the reach of government control and the power of elected officials is constrained by law and tradition. All democratic systems require that excellent people stand up and put themselves forward for elected office.

There can be stark choices offered between competing visions without making compromises on matters of character, decency and integrity. Most Americans don’t look at politics and see excellence. They don’t look at people on a ballot and find inspiration. This is a shame because they are out there. Our collective cynicism makes it easy to stake a declaration of the lazy, which is that the whole thing is broken, rotten and not worth being involved with. While this may be true at many levels, it yields the levers of power to people who shouldn’t have it.

There are two archetypes of people that have come to dominate American politics/media over the last decade. The first are the “takers,” and the second are the “patriots.”

The “takers” are a destructive lot, but as a general proposition are advantaged by the fact that so many of them have no capacity for shame or embarrassment. They will lie, bluster and do anything for attention, money and fame. They lack humility, integrity and any sense of right and wrong, but generally generate a lot of clicks and headlines because the freak show always sells. 

Running for office is a brutal undertaking. It is non-stop and full-time, even if you have a full-time job, which is essential.

Kara Jenkins is the current administrator to the Nevada Equal Rights Commission. She explains her job and its mission by saying:

I lead a diverse team of professionals who ensure everyone gets a fair shot in Nevada. Nobody ever gets dealt a card from the bottom of the deck.

She adds:

An average of 40 million people come to Las Vegas every year and spend a few dollars at our casinos. Every one of our guests are betting with the same odds.

It should be the same thing for our locals and we should have a house advantage. The locals are our city’s backbone and are working two, three jobs and doing it around the clock, providing a world-class experience that is magical for people all over the world, and yet too often, they aren’t seen or heard.

I’m going to be a mayor that picks up the baton from a family legacy, and makes sure this glowing city shines upon every person living in it. We built this city.

I have the energy to lead this city for three terms maximizing the momentum, and finally rolling out the red carpet for our locals.

Kara Jenkins is a patriot. She could do anything that she wants with her life. She could run a hedge fund or a bank, but instead chose something else. She is smart, competent, decent and completely normal, except for one thing — which we should put squarely on the table. She is a candidate for office with deep experience, choosing to put herself forward into a sea of utter madness, with full knowledge of what it is she is facing because she believes in democracy.

Kara Jenkins believes in America. She believes in the promise of public service to improve it. This is the lost legacy of John F. Kennedy that must be recaptured to push through this rancid era.

The Las Vegas mayoral race may not affect you directly, but it affects all of us like every campaign does, if it precludes normalcy from sea to shining sea.

When the accumulation of threats, bullying and intimidation reach their natural end the only people left in office are an assortment of the lowest common denominator. Why? Because that is what the system is designed to produce by that point, and we are racing towards it at warp speed.

I believe that exceptional people who are running for office deserve support. It is why I am asking you to consider supporting Kara Jenkins with a donation if you can.

Kara is running in a primary that will advance the top two finishers, one of whom is a 73-year-old career politician, multimillionaire and former Congresswoman named  Shelley Berkley.

There is one slot open. Kara is in the running and can win if she raises enough money, which is one of the most brutal parts of politics. People are busy, and don’t have time to study the candidates who don’t have the money to communicate with them. Normally, this rhythm plays out between marginal people running against each other, but every now and then, it penalizes the exceptional people who can’t break through because they lack resources.

Personally, I don’t want to help my friend Kara break through. I want to help her win because we need to support a rising generation of new leaders who are ready to help rebuild our politics after the catastrophe at hand reaches its apogee. America needs its patriots. Kara Jenkins is one.

I don’t ask for you to support candidates lightly. I do it because it is necessary.

We live in an era in which our nation is besotted and burdened with some of the worst political leaders in our history. There is an accumulation of low men and women who need to be driven from public life. They need to be reproached and rebuked with the vote of American citizens who send a message, deliver a a warning and lay down the law.

The lack of principle, adherence to duty, obligation and responsibility has brought the nation to the edge of an abyss. It is why people like Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz must be defeated. Both are running against exceptional candidates, and I am going to talk about these patriots in The Warning.

Each Monday, I’m going to introduce you to a candidate and respectfully ask you to join me in supporting them with money or time.

I also want to challenge you to find someone worthy close to home and help them. When you find them, please share their stories here. The Warning will be a platform where we try and lift up the best and brightest from a rising generation that are ready to take their place in the line.

Kara Jenkins is ready. She just needs help because it isn’t easy for people to run against the system and the next bunch of millionaires who decide it’s their turn to run it.

There are places in America where all of us have a stake in how they are run. Las Vegas is one of them, which is why I’m asking you to consider helping a good person help other ordinary people, by giving her a chance to win and make a difference.

---

---