Reshuffling the Deck of Nevada Politics : Election: Newcomers are wild cards in a game once ruled by powerbrokers. Homespun aura is fading fast.

LAS VEGAS —  Three years ago Jan Jones was a political nobody in the Silver State, a mother of five best known as a TV car huckster with sparkling jewelry and a toothy grin.

Since then, Jones has been rather busy. First, she became mayor of Las Vegas, the biggest city in the nation’s fastest-growing state. Now, she is mounting a strong run for governor, a quest that could make her the first woman to reach the top rung on Nevada’s ladder of power.

Jones, 45, is clearly an overnight political sensation. Part of that metamorphosis is a product of her energy, ideas and telegenic personality. But her rise also proves a broader point: Political change is afoot amid the sagebrush and slot machines.

Once a state where a small fraternity of powerbrokers anointed candidates for major offices and dominated the political game, Nevada today is a place where phenomenal growth has created a jackpot of opportunities for newcomers and neophytes who possess the drive to get involved.

“You no longer have to be a good old boy to break into Nevada politics,” said Eric Herzik, a political scientist at the University of Nevada in Reno. “That traditional network is breaking down, and it’s creating openings for different kinds of people who never had much access before.”

Other signs of Nevada’s political maturation abound:

* Campaigns--once provincial affairs that relied on door-to-door visits with voters and were run by a small coterie of managers who doubled as lobbyists--are now big-time, big-money events. Experienced consultants from other states have settled here, and a cottage industry of advertising companies, polling firms and television production houses has sprung up to serve them.

“There is much more resident sophistication than you found before,” said Sig Rogich, a veteran Las Vegas consultant and former adviser to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush. “In the past, there were just a few of us local people doing it all. Now (consultants) with reputations have moved in from outside.”

* New restrictions on the financing of political campaigns are winning favor in the Legislature. In 1991, the first-ever limits on campaign contributions were adopted, and candidates may no longer spend leftover donations on personal items. Political action committees were recently required to register with the secretary of state, and lobbyists also face new scrutiny. Under a bill passed last year, they must identify who they wine and dine in monthly reports.

* In another change--one triggering widespread lament--the state’s staggering population growth is gradually eroding the small-town, homespun feel that has long been a cherished feature of politics, Nevada style. Traditionally, elected officials of the highest rank were expected to show up at every 4-H fair or weenie roast. The governor--who was always called by his first name--took constituent calls at home and traveled without a trace of security.

As Nevadans’ numbers soar, that sort of intimacy is becoming impossible. “Longtime residents expect a level of access (to politicians) that you’d never see in a state like California,” Gov. Bob Miller said in an interview. “I want to fulfill that expectation, but as Nevada grows it gets tougher and tougher.”

* While women candidates have made the strongest gains, Nevada minorities are running for office in record numbers. The state is just 3% Asian, but a Chinese American--Cheryl Lau--was elected secretary of state in 1990, becoming the first minority to hold a statewide office. Now she is one of the three top challengers in this year’s governor’s race.

Gay men and lesbians, meanwhile, are also emerging as a political force, one wooed by candidates in statewide contests. Last year, gay rights advocates celebrated a victory that once seemed unthinkable in this conservative land settled by Mormons--the repeal of an anti-sodomy law by the Legislature.

“Little by little, you’re seeing change in the political orientation of the state,” said Bob Fulkerson of the Nevada Progressive Coalition, a new group that hopes to accelerate that shift by recruiting candidates for political office. “A lot of the old kingmakers are still around, but their stranglehold is unraveling.”

At the root of many of these changes, experts say, is the state’s extraordinary growth. Lured by jobs, cheap housing and low taxes, outsiders are pouring into Nevada in dizzying numbers, propelling the population from 800,000 in 1980 to more than 1.4 million today. In Clark County, home of Las Vegas, roughly 4,000 new residents arrive each month, most of them from California.

Some come from Republican pockets such as Orange County, and they share conservative values long dominant here, such as a disdain for taxes. Many arrivals, however, appear to be nourishing more liberal trends. Jean Ford, a former state legislator from Reno, says this phenomenon is visible in the contrast between two statewide referendums, one in 1978, one in 1990.

In 1978, Nevadans defeated the Equal Rights Amendment by a 4-1 margin. In 1990, 63% of the state’s voters passed a measure guaranteeing a woman’s right to an unrestricted abortion.

“That vote was an astonishing victory,” said Ford, who now teaches women’s studies at the University of Nevada. “It proved how far we’ve come, how attitudes have changed.”

Beyond their views on such issues, the newcomers are affecting Nevada’s political agenda with their sheer numbers, creating problems on a scale never imagined when the state was sparsely populated and largely rural. Schools, social services, water, health care, overcrowded prisons--these and other concerns now dominate debate and create unprecedented challenges for Nevada’s leaders.

Clark County, home to 64% of the state’s population, faces the most daunting pressures. This fall, voters will be asked to approve $905 million in bonds to begin building 110 desperately needed schools. Last year, county voters rejected bonds to pay for more police and parks; there is little confidence they will approve them for schools.

“Five years ago, nobody ever worried about growth. It was just, ‘Go, go go,’ ” said Jon Ralston, a columnist and publisher of a newsletter on Nevada politics. “Now we see the consequences of that attitude, and today growth is the political issue.”

Despite its evolution into an urbanized state more like California than Wyoming, Nevada has not altogether lost its legendary flair for political quirkiness. This tendency began early--with Nevada’s admission to the Union in 1864.

Statehood, recalls historian James Hulse, happened not because the desert region was “suitably prepared to graduate from territorial status.” Instead, President Abraham Lincoln made it happen because he needed Nevada’s Electoral College votes to win reelection and end the Civil War. “No other state,” Hulse writes in “Silver State,” his recent history of Nevada, “was ever born so prematurely or had so much trouble coming of age.”

Indeed, had he lived, Lincoln might have come to regret his decision. For Nevada became a notorious maverick among states, scorned for its legalization of gambling, prostitution and prize-fighting--and its willingness to serve up a quickie divorce. Its politics were never, ever dull.

There was, for instance, the tale of the U.S. senator reelected on his deathbed in 1940. During a pre-election drinking spree, the Democratic senator suffered a heart attack and was declared a dying man. Fearing that voters would elect his rival--thus placing the seat in Republican hands--his backers hid the news. The senator won the election, and when he died five days later, the governor appointed another Democrat to succeed him.

At the Statehouse in Carson City, old-timers can recall many a memorable episode, from the Assembly Speaker who presided drunk and incoherent over a session’s closing days, to brawls in the halls and a mysterious bullet said to have been fired through a portrait of Lincoln during a heated debate.

More recently, a popular prostitute from Esmerelda County nearly won a seat in the state Assembly. Beverly Harrell, proprietor of the Cottontail Ranch, lost the 1974 race by just 120 votes after campaigning in an RV filled with enthusiastic call girls.

Though rare today, colorful characters still pop up on Nevada’s political scene. This year, a man named Rhinestone Cowboy is making a bid for governor. He is joined on the ballot by Samuel Bull IV, an electrician whose campaign pledges include a shift to executions by hanging and a return to Nevada’s no speed limit days.

If voters are not keen on Cowboy, Bull or any of the other candidates on the ballot, no matter--Nevada continues to offer them an option available in few other states: the chance to reject all the contenders and choose none of the above.

This option has produced some intriguing outcomes; in the 1980 Republican primary, none of the above outpolled George Bush in the race for President. Ronald Reagan came in first.

Although such peculiarities are harmless, other enduring traits of Nevada politics are somewhat less charming, critics say. Despite its growth and increasingly complex problems, Nevada is still run by a part-time “citizens” Legislature that meets for about five months every other year.

Ralston, the columnist, calls the part-time Legislature “a ridiculous relic” that is highly vulnerable to special-interest pressure: “These legislators are paid a pittance--$6,800 for the session--and they have no research staff of their own,” he said. “That makes them all the more reliant on lobbyists. Information is power.”

The most powerful players, of course, are the gaming moguls. Since their influence eclipsed that of miners and ranchers in the 1950s, casino owners have contributed more to political candidates than any other interest group. Their lobbyists have an unparalleled record of squashing gaming tax increases and other legislation deemed hostile to the state’s No. 1 industry.

Many of today’s gambling titans are using new techniques to make their mark. Multimillionaire Stephen A. Wynn, whose casinos include the Mirage and Treasure Island, created a highly sophisticated polling and voter research operation two years ago. He shares his findings with chosen candidates.

“In the past, the casinos just threw money at campaigns,” said Dan Hart, who was hired by Wynn to set up the system and now works as campaign manager for Jan Jones. “That still happens, but now they’re also finding smarter ways to use their resources.”

As usual, this year’s battle for the governor’s post will be dominated by gaming contributions, with the Democratic incumbent Miller--the son of a casino executive--reaping the lion’s share of support. But the fiercely contested race also symbolizes the new dynamics evident in Nevada politics.

For starters, the scale of the campaigns mounted by Miller and his three challengers is unprecedented, making it by far the most expensive governor’s race in state history. Although the total will look paltry beside the $40 million expected to be spent in the race for governor of California, it will easily top $4 million--twice the sum spent in 1990.

The nature of the campaigns is different as well. With the state’s population explosion, the candidates are more reliant than ever on television advertising to carry their message: “There’s no avoiding it,” said Billy Vassiliadis, Miller’s political consultant.

The most striking change is visible in the people who believe they have a shot at the state’s top political job. In this sense, two candidates stand out.

On the Republican side there is Lau, 49, a former university professor and deputy attorney general who came out of nowhere to win the secretary of state’s job in 1990. She is opposing Assemblyman Jim Gibbons of Reno. In the Democratic primary there is Jones, a Santa Monica native who left a lucrative career with a family auto dealership business to become mayor of Las Vegas in 1991. Both are political rookies. Both are newcomers to Nevada. Both are highly educated. And both are women opposing men in Tuesday’s primary.

“This is the new breed of politician we never had in the old Nevada,” said Guy Rocha, the state’s archivist. “What would be truly unusual is if these two women faced off (in the general election) in November.”

At the moment, that does not look likely. The latest polls show Miller--a former Clark County district attorney whose political career spans 20 years--with a comfortable lead over Jones, his primary opponent, and all other rivals. With the state’s economy in robust shape, his challengers have had trouble finding fodder for potent attacks.

But some observers believe growth may be a wild card in this election. Newcomers, they argue, arrive here with open minds and limited knowledge of the state’s political players. That may dilute the traditional advantage of incumbency, giving Miller’s challengers a boost.

“When I first ran for office, everybody was suspicious of me because I’d only been in the state for five years and they figured I didn’t truly understand Nevada,” said Lt. Gov. Sue Wagner, whose political career began in the Assembly two decades ago.

“But look around this state today--everybody’s a newcomer. They don’t care whether you’re a native or not. What they want to know is, ‘Can you do the job?’ ”