HORATIO
I saw him once; he was a goodly king.
HAMLET
He was a man, take him for all in all,
I shall not look upon his like again.
Whenever someone of consequence to me shuffles off their mortal coil, this exchange from Hamlet always resonates with me. And so it did with Bill Raggio, the undisputed master of Nevada Politics for generations.
~~~
I never had occasion to work with Senator Raggio on anything, as I had with many other legislators. Indeed, I only ever had one conversation with him, when I was running for the Assembly, and I knocked on his door. He answered his own door, which for some reason surprised me – what was I expecting, a butler? (Maybe I was.) He seemed happy to see someone doing it the old fashioned way, I think, and he graciously listened to my pitch.
So it’s easy for me, a relatively recent Nevada transplant, to see Raggio as Horatio saw Hamlet’s father – a king, or some kind of force of nature that always has been and always would be.
But such a view is unfair, and does the man and his deeds – both good and ill – no justice. And if we don’t remember the man he was truly, to learn the real lessons from his actual legacy instead of some caricature of one, lionized or demonized, then we will have dishonored him tremendously.
~~~
Mike Chamberlain has the most complete roundup possible of various reactions from around the state, which speak to the impact that he had on every one of us in some way or another. It’s interesting to read them, particularly as someone who wasn’t here during the bulk of Raggio’s career.
There can be no question that Raggio is more responsible for the state of the State of Nevada than any other human being, both the good and the bad. But whatever he did, and whatever the eventual consequences, there can be no honest dispute that he did it with a deep love for the state he helped govern.
I’m left to wonder – did he truly understand the seismic changes that came in the last five years? Did he see them coming? Could he?
Will we?
~~~
We live in a vastly different time from the one Raggio embodied so completely, which makes it even easier to see him simply as a political king from the dusty pages of a history book – a goodly king to most of us, perhaps, but a two dimensional one. What a shame it would be if we were so foolish as to not see so much more.
For he was a man, with capabilities and limits and skills and ambitions and mistakes and talents. He enjoyed tremendous successes and suffered failures. He had foresight and blind spots, just as we all do. He gave use shoulders to stand on, and an enormous legacy to study and gain from. He’s given us lessons and warnings, both in word and deed. He had the courage to thrust himself into public life, not content to sit on the sidelines of his own community and history. He was a man, but because he worked hard and loved what he did and the state in which he did it and the people he did it with, he became a great man.
We shall not look upon his like again.
