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I agree.Part of an interview with Senator Joe Neal by Claytee White on June 1, 2006. Neal talks about his work in local government and working to prevent fraud in the election of Aaron Williams, the first African American North Las Vegas city councilman.
Joe Neal oral history interviews, 2006 January 24, 2006 February 07, 2006 March 06, 2006 March 24, 2006 June 01. OH-01363. [Audio recording] Oral History Research Center, Special Collections and Archives, University L
English
Okay. That was on page 31— the first interview, where I said that Aaron Williams had been elected to the city council of North Las Vegas prior to running for the county commission. Aaron was the first local official of color to be elected to local government. We worked to get him in office and I recall that we had to seek a court order to impound the voting machines in that election, meaning that city election. What happened that you had to impound the machines? Because no black had ever been elected to the city council. And it was kind of funny because we were out at night and we got Charles Kellar to draw up the order for us. Well, what Charles Kellar didn't do was — in order to draw up an order for them to have the judge to impound the order and get the judge to sign it, you have to have a petition. So you have to petition the court to do that. So we called one judge at about eight o'clock at night and that was Judge Mendoza. Yes, Judge Mendoza. And we called him. So Judge Mendoza came and sat in the car. He and I knew each other. We had been going at each other before he became judge. So he got in the car. He read the order. And he said, "Where is the petition?" I said, "What petition?" He said, "Don't you know you have to have a petition if you're going to ask the Court to do this?" I said, "No." I said, "Okay." So we went back. We got Kellar to draw up the petition. And now we come back and can't find Mendoza. So there was another judge that we got a hold of by the name of McDonald. McDonald was one of those quick-tempered Irishman. So we get him up out of the house, get him out of the bed and go in the house and say, "Judge, we've got this order here and we'd like you to sign it. We want to impound the voting machines. We just got a black guy elected, you know, in North Las Vegas, and we don't want anything to happen to the machines in terms of the vote count until they are canvassed by the people who are supposed to do that." He started signing the order and the pen wouldn't write. He threw the pen across the room. I said, "We got this guy, but is he really going to sign this order for us?" He did sign the order. But that was kind of funny. He threw the pen across the room and said, "This damn pen won't write."