Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo should have asked the officer to write him a traffic ticket when he was pulled over in Las Vegas, said another longtime public official who had a similar brush with the law while in elected office.
Charles Oberly, who served as Delaware’s attorney general from 1983 to 1995, said Lombardo’s traffic stop in May reminded him of when he was pulled over for speeding by a Delaware state trooper in 1986.
In Oberly’s case, however, he insisted on being written a ticket.
“I said to her, ‘Officer, you caught me on radar. You have to give me a ticket,’” said Oberly, a Democrat who was also Delaware’s U.S. attorney from 2011 until 2017.
It’s what Lombardo should have done, Oberly said in a phone interview Friday. Oberly reached out to the Review-Journal after seeing the news about Lombardo’s stop in the New York Times.
“The guy should have simply accepted it or said, ‘Give me a ticket,’” Oberly said of Lombardo. “And if he didn’t give him a ticket, be honest about it, say, ‘I got stopped last night. A police officer didn’t give me a ticket, but I should have.’”
Lombardo, a Republican, invoked his name after he was stopped May 15 in Las Vegas for a suspected red light violation. He was let go without a citation, according to body-camera video.
Video footage showed that Lombardo said “I’m Joe Lombardo” before the Metropolitan Police Department sergeant who initiated the stop, near Mandalay Bay, told the governor why he was being pulled over.
Footage of the stop has amassed thousands of views and sparked debate over whether the governor tried to use his name to avoid a ticket. A popular boutique theater in downtown Las Vegas gave out free movie tickets to customers who told employees “I’m Joe Lombardo” at checkout, and some of Lombardo’s campaign signs in Las Vegas have been vandalized with references to the traffic stop.
Halee Dobbins, a Lombardo campaign spokesperson, said in an email that Metro officers use discretion in tens of thousands of traffic stops each year and did not respond to questions asking whether Lombardo would ask to be cited.
“Our response remains unchanged: Governor Lombardo and his wife were briefly pulled over by Las Vegas Metropolitan Police, he cooperated fully with the officer, and the matter was resolved with the same routine professional discretion Metro officers exercise in tens of thousands of traffic stops every year,” Dobbins said.
Dobbins also cited Sheriff Kevin McMahill, who said last week that Metro so far this year had carried out about 210,000 traffic stops, resulting in approximately 140,000 citations.
“There have been over 70,000 stops without citations — will you also ask all those people if they will ask to be cited retroactively?” Dobbins said.
Report: Oberly insisted on ticket
Similar to Lombardo, Oberly was in the middle of a re-election campaign when the stop occurred. But the ‘86 stop did not become a political flash point the way the governor’s stop has, Oberly said.
It did, however, make the papers.
An April 11, 1986, story in the Evening Journal in Wilmington reported Oberly was heading to speak at a local Democratic women’s club when he was stopped by a Delaware state trooper who pulled him over for speeding and was ready to let him go after learning his identity.
Oberly said Friday he was driving in a new car and didn’t have the vehicle’s registration yet, but gave the trooper his driver’s license.
“He wouldn’t be denied,” the front-page story said of Oberly. “So he was slapped with a ticket on the registration offense.”
Oberly insisted on the ticket because he wanted to “be treated regularly, more severely,” the Evening Journal reported.
Oberly said that during his traffic stop in ‘86, he let the trooper do her job.
“She came back and said, ‘Are you Charles Oberly the attorney general?’ and I said ‘Yes, officer,’” Oberly said.
Oberly said the trooper told him he was going about 10 mph over the speed limit, but it was her discretion not to issue him a ticket. Even though Oberly was caught speeding on radar, he said, the officer ticketed him for failing to give his vehicle’s registration.
Oberly said that after the stop, he continued to his speaking engagement and told the audience all about it. Oberly said he wanted the speeding ticket because he felt others in his position would not have gotten off easy.
“If you get picked up tonight on the radar (gun), you probably would have gotten a ticket,” Oberly recalled telling attendees.
The following day, Oberly called the superintendent of the Delaware State Police, he said. Oberly was told tickets are handed out at an officer’s discretion.
That answer didn’t satisfy Oberly.
“I said to him, ‘I’m the chief law enforcement officer in the state and I’m ordering you to give me and have her write out my ticket,” Oberly said. “About three or four hours later, the ticket did arrive.”
In addition to the registration offense, Oberly was ticketed for driving 66 mph in a 50-mph zone, according to the Evening Journal. The speeding ticket carried a $16 fine.
Oberly: Metro had discretion to give ticket
McMahill previously said officers have discretion on whether to issue citations for minor traffic infractions. Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, Lombardo’s Democratic gubernatorial rival, said at a campaign event last week Lombardo “absolutely” abused his authority by dropping his name during the stop.
Oberly said that, in his case, he had an ethical obligation to ask for the ticket. Although he agreed with McMahill that officers have discretion for issuing a ticket, Oberly said Lombardo should have been cited.
“When you announce your name before they even ask you your license plate, that’s pretty clear to me that you know what you’ve done,” Oberly said. “If you have two wits about you, you’re going to know the name of the governor.”
Nevada conservative political strategist Chuck Muth said Wednesday that Lombardo’s stop is a “nothing issue” that’s being played up in the middle of a heated political campaign. Muth added that Oberly’s situation is not comparable to the governor’s because there is no evidence Lombardo committed a violation.
“If he was clocked by radar, the gentleman in Delaware, that’s one thing,” Muth said. “But I don’t know that the governor’s ever acknowledged (or) that he agreed that he had come to a rolling stop. My understanding is that the governor believes that he did come to a complete stop and that he didn’t agree that he had violated the law.”
A Metro spokesperson did not respond to a list of questions seeking whether Lombardo has requested to be cited.
Oberly said that if the Metro officer who stopped Lombardo was trying to ticket him, the governor should have accepted it and moved on.
Oberly said it worked for him.
“I knew they had me on radar, and I knew darn well that I deserved the ticket,” Oberly said. “So that’s why I got it.”
Contact Casey Harrison at charrison@reviewjournal.com.
