Early voting for primary starts Saturday

Early voting for the primary election begins Saturday and all eyes will be on a series of legislative races in which incumbent Republicans are being challenged for their votes supporting Gov. Brian Sandoval’s educational tax package.

That includes Carson City’s District 40 race in which Republican P.K. O’Neill faces three challengers.

Former city Treasurer Al Kramer, Chris Forbush and Sam England are all attempting to deny him a second term because of his vote for the $1.3 billion tax package. The county convention endorsed Forbush, a political newcomer, not Kramer despite the fact many in the party pushed him to run. England didn’t attend the county convention.

Michael Greedy is the only Democrat in the race with Independent American John Wagner rounding out the field. They won’t appear on the primary ballot.

The top of the ticket is the race to replace Harry Reid in the U.S. Senate. There are nine Republicans in that primary along with four Democrats. The four who list no party affiliation and IAP candidate Tom Jones won’t be in the primary.

The list includes perennial GOP candidate Sharron Angle.

The expected frontrunners’ however, are Rep. Joe Heck on the Republican side and former Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto, the Democratic favorite.

Tarkanian is putting up an unexpectedly strong fight against Heck but Masto appears to have a clear path to the nomination.

Congressional District 2 is also on the ballot but incumbent Mark Amodei’s name won’t be before voters yet since no other Republican filed. Three Democrats — Vance Alm, Chip Evans and Rick Shepherd, will fight it out to see who takes on Amodei. Drew Knight who listed no party and John Everhart, the IAP candidate, aren’t in the primary battle.

In Carson City, Mayor Bob Crowell has three challengers to his bid for a third term, all of whom entered the race on the final day of candidate filing. They are Chris Carver, Jerry Cinani and Kurt Meyer.

Supervisors Brad Bonkowski and Jim Shirk each have a challenger in their bid for a second term — Maurice White and John Barrette respectively — but those races won’t be on the ballot until November either. The same with Steve Reynolds’ race for the school board where only Michael Walker Jr. is challenging.

Joe Cacioppo, Laurel Crossman and Susan Hart drew no opponents in their school board races.

Early voting runs through June 10 and is held at the clerk’s office at the courthouse on Musser.

The Carson City Clerk’s office will be open 10 a.m.-2 p.m. both Saturday, May 28 and Saturday, June 4.

The office will be closed May 30, Memorial Day but open 8 a.m.-6 p.m. all other days during early voting.

It ends just four days shy of the June 14 primary election.