The Nevada Independent is a reliable left-wing mouthpiece in Nevada. They do some compare-and-contrast articles of candidates. Candidates get the same questions, and they reprint the answers. It can be useful.
I saw the one on Treasurer. I lost the Republican primary to Drew Johnson, who is now the candidate. I tweeted about this article and the answers, but thought I would put them here for people who aren’t on X.
Very few voters in Nevada understand what a Treasurer does. Politicians don’t even understand. The Indy had it right. Nevada's chief banker, the treasurer is charged with overseeing state investments, maintaining records of unclaimed property and helping decide when to issue bonds. The nearly 60-person office also administers the Millennium Scholarship program, which has helped about 200,000 students afford college since it was established in the late 1990s and facilitates tax-advantaged savings programs for future college students and people with disabilities.
Let’s be clear. Neither candidate understands banking. Neither understands finance. Both are career bureaucrat/think tank policy people looking to become career politicians. This office is a stepping stone to get name recognition because no one pays attention. It’s a resume builder.
In primary debates, it was extremely rare for me to get a question that remotely had anything to do with being treasurer. At the Veterans in Politics “debate”, we got a question on “light rail”. Steve S didn’t even know the meaning of the word “macro”. Kind of hard to debate when people don’t understand finance. Also hard to debate when your opponent is financially illiterate, which Drew Johnson is.
Here are the questions the Indy asked. For what it’s worth, they deal with the role, but they are broad, matter-of-fact questions anyone can avoid and answer. Both candidates did. You can click over and read their entire answers.
Should Nevada divest from any industries?
The Millennium Scholarship is not expected to cover all eligible students by next year. How do we increase funding for the scholarship?
How do we increase enrollment for college savings programs, such as 529 plans and prepaid tuition, the latter of which is only enrolling about 300 people?
The State Infrastructure Bank has been used as a tool to help create more affordable housing, but has received minimal funding from the Legislature. Do you have any ideas on how to increase its funding?
Is Nevada doing enough to return unclaimed property? What changes should we make, if any, to improve that?
There is about $1.2 billion in Nevada’s rainy day fund as of 2025. Are you satisfied with that amount and what changes would you advise, if any?
Are there any programs you would like to expand in the office?
Nevada’s current treasurer, Democrat Zach Conine, instituted a DEI investment policy. The Democrat, Tya Mathis-Coleman, would continue it. Drew Johnson would end it. This should be table stakes for any Republican with half a brain.
It should be ended. Corporate America is running away from it, and other states are running away from it. Why? They are getting a shitty return on investment.
The Millennium Scholarship answers are funny. Instead of taking on the real core issue head on both avoid it by either kicking it to the legislature or starting a new government program. Neither is the conservative way to deal with this issue, and as a matter of fact, both are thinking like liberals.
I did the math. If you accept the current level of growth with the scholarship and fully fund it as an evergreen endowment, it’s a $1.2B endowment. That assumes a 5% growth rate and a 2-3% inflation rate.
The Millennium Scholarship is broke. The conservative solution to this problem is to end it. College, the need for college, all have changed tremendously since 2000 when the scholarship started. Keep the commitment to the kids who have it, and end it.
Or, figure out a way to fund it via the legislature and private donations from people similar to Trump Accounts. Drew advocates seizing private property in the unclaimed property account. That’s not being Republican.
I’d be on the side of simply killing it. That’s a common-sense businessperson answer, not a politician’s answer.
Prepaid tuition looks like a good idea that has gone nowhere. Maybe kill it. It only works with Nevada colleges, and there just isn’t the population or demand for them. 529 programs are a good idea, and there needs to be a lot of education around them. The way you do it is using alternative ways, not the way we have always done it. Again, neither candidate breaks new ground here.
The State Infrastructure Bank is a politicized organ. Money flowed into it and into the unions of Clark County for political favors. Again, neither candidate has a clue as to what to do with the SIB.
It was supposed to be an evergreen fund that invested in net present value-positive projects and returned the money to the SIB for reinvestment into more net present value projects. Except, it’s run by politicians who do not know what NPV-positive projects are. These two candidates are politicos, not MBAs or bankers or investors.
The SIB is another “do-gooder” idea that probably should be killed, saving Nevada taxpayers boatloads of money. Expansion of government programs is a left-wing idea. Government isn’t the answer to problems. Government does its role best when it is a facilitator.
An alternative for the SIB is to give it a new mission. Counties and municipalities across Nevada sometimes have difficulty accessing public debt markets. The SIB could bundle debt, access the market, decrease the costs of accessing the market, and save taxpayers money while getting infrastructure projects built across the state. Lord knows, after going around the state, there is a lot of infrastructure that needs to be built.
Unclaimed property…..again, more of the same. There is not much difference between the two candidates. Unclaimed property is private property. Raiding it infringes on private property rights. Treasurers love to raid unclaimed property and turn it into political giveaways. However, today, I’d program AI agents to scrape public records and match unclaimed property with a human check on the end result before any distributions. Cheap, efficient, and quick.
The Rainy Day fund. Let’s be clear. The Biden spending boom funded the Rainy Day fund. It wasn’t investment magic. Tya is looser with the purse strings around the RDF. You could raise the cap, but that means more money will have to go in the fund. Where is that coming from? Your wallet. Investing it better for greater return will help, but that’s marginal.
The answer is don’t spend it. Save it for a truly Rainy Day where it is an absolute emergency.
Drew wants people to be able to pay taxes in precious metals, a terrible idea. He also advocated holding Bitcoin as an asset in the portfolio. Another terrible idea.
Expanding programs is a leading question for liberals. They always want to expand programs. Drew’s idea isn’t terrible, but I would be looking at cutting programs everywhere I could in order to save taxpayers’ money and get government out of the way.
One thing the Indy didn’t ask about was financial literacy. Nevada ranks #41. Ten years ago, it ranked #41. Nevada ought to partner with Brilliant.org’s KOJI app and use technology to boost financial literacy. In debates, Drew wanted to go through the public school system. Been there, done that, yawn. No doubt, Tya wouldn’t be much different.
Is there a difference between them besides the obvious? Political party, gender, and skin color?
Not much. Tya has a PhD in public policy, whereas Drew has a master’s. Neither has done anything in the private sector. Neither is a finance person, and both are running to be the chief banker.
Tya’s personal character is light years better than Drew’s. No FEC or finance problems in her personal history, whereas Drew has a long track record of mismanagement and shadiness. His 2024 campaign was full of financial shenanigans, and he had a couple in our primary campaign too. That’s what happens when you use Thomas Datwyler as your treasurer. He was George Santos’ treasurer too. Santos went to jail and was pardoned by Trump.
From all accounts, the Democratic primary race was not nasty. My race was. Drew was in the gutter from the starting line, and he has done that in all of his primary races.
The treasurer has access to over 50 bank accounts. The potential for fraud, kickback schemes, crony capitalism, and other nefarious things like that are right there for the taking.
Republicans and Democrats will urge their tribes to vote red or blue, but the Treasurer’s position should be the most apolitical in government. Even the hard lefty paper I linked to agrees.
What should questioners be asking? The Millennium Scholarship, SIB, and Unclaimed Property questions are fair, but I’d go deeper into it than a broad brush.
As the state’s chief banker, these are good questions.
What do you think about the duration of the bond portfolio? Would you change it? Why or why not?
What do you think about the mix of investments on the $12B portfolio? Would you change it? Why or why not, and if you were to change it, how would you change it?
Both will outsource the core parts of the job to consultants. That means fees for Nevada taxpayers. It also means slippage in the market. It also means getting a second or third look, not a first look, at bonds that are on the market and peddled by the institutions that sell to government treasuries.
Neither is going to take Nevada to the next level when it comes to finance. Nevada is not a state people look to for cutting-edge or competent financial management. It’s not in Tier 1, but Tier 2. Average.
One note: Drew's wife is the source of all the ethics complaints against Stavros Anthony and his staff. She also wrote disparaging letters to women's groups across Nevada disparaging a supporter of mine. A career grifter. I think Tya's husband is an attorney connected to politics, but never met him and do not know.