Civil Rights Groups Blast Wolfson After He Drops Out Of Forum

By Dana Gentry, Nevada Current

March 31, 2022

Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson, who is seeking re-election, backed out of a Thursday candidate forum sponsored by civil rights and Black advocacy organizations because he and his staff didn’t feel safe participating, according to Yvette Williams, chairperson of the Clark County Black Caucus.

Williams says Wolfson, who attended an education forum this week, doesn’t appear afraid of the community at large.

“His response of not feeling safe, that appears to be only for Black folks,” Williams said in a phone interview Wednesday.

The event was originally scheduled to be live, but then was switched to a virtual format. Wolfson and his campaign consultant, Tom Letizia, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. But in a statement to the Review-Journal Wednesday, Wolfson said he dropped out of the live event because of recent incidents where Gov. Steve Sisolak and gubernatorial candidate Joe Lombardo have been confronted in public.

Ozzie Fumo tweeted that Wolfson is afraid of voters and said he looks forward to participating, regardless.

Williams says Wolfson agreed last year to participate in the candidate forum. Organizers abandoned the original plan for a live audience when Wolfson balked.

“There have been several events that NAACP has hosted where they’ve had protesters attend and disrupt the meeting,” Williams says. “And so he felt, and this is his campaign saying this, that their team feels unsafe.”

But even a move to an undisclosed location where cameras would capture the event live with just the crew, moderator and candidates in attendance didn’t satisfy Wolfson in the end.

Williams says she was informed Monday he was backing out, again because his team didn’t feel safe.

“It is incredibly disappointing to see Wolfson refusing to participate in a forum hosted by organizations devoted to civil rights and to communities of color after he made a commitment to do so and our organizations respectively accommodated some really absurd requests, including moving the forum to a confidential location with only a virtual audience, to ensure his participation,” ACLU of Nevada Executive Director Athar Haseebullah said in a statement. “I am mostly confused as to why someone would be seeking public office if they want to avoid the public entirely.”

“I think it raises a question about what is his perception of my community? How does he perceive Black people that he feels nervous?” Williams asked rhetorically. “What does it say about how he does his job?”

Roxann McCoy, president of the NAACP, said in a statement she finds it “disrespectful that he doesn’t feel he should engage with the Black community and suggests he feels unsafe. He should judge a person by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. We’ve gone out of our way to accommodate him and meet his requests.”

“I feel in my gut he never intended to participate. They just had us jump through all these hoops and loops and everything, while looking for a reason for him not to participate” Williams says, noting the organizers incurred additional expenses for a location and a camera crew. “I think this was all part of the ruse, I’ll call it, for lack of a better word.”

Williams says Wolfson is “willing to come to the Black Caucus Board or the NAACP. ‘I’ll come and do that’, he says. Why are you afraid to come and do this? Is it because the other candidates will be there? I’m thinking maybe you just don’t want to sit next to Ozzie Fumo and this other guy (Timothy Treffinger.) I’m starting to feel that’s the real issue.”

Williams says Nevada’s Democratic party organizations, which have hammered Republican candidates for hiding from the public, should hold Wolfson, one of their own, accountable.

“Every resident in Clark County should be outraged that their district attorney, who’s getting a salary from your taxpayer dollars, doesn’t feel that he’s accountable to you and doesn’t feel that he has to engage you in a conversation,” says Williams. “I think everyone should be outraged regardless of what color you are.”

Nevada Current, a nonprofit, online source of political news and commentary, documents the policies, institutions and systems that affect Nevadans’ daily lives. The Current is part of States Newsroom, a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit supported by grants and a coalition of donors and readers.