LAS VEGAS, NV — Organizers of the Clark County Republican Convention on March 8th were caught with their pants down when an ad for an adult-entertainment website appeared on the lanyards holding name badges around attendees’ necks.In a tongue-in-cheek column published in the Las Vegas Review Journal on March 16th, Erin Neff wondered how such a blunder could have happened. Are Nevada GOP organizers in bed with the adult industry, or did someone just not understand the implications of bright-red neck straps sporting “www.elegantangel.com?”
“Who knew that this, the so-called party of family values, the party whose platform keeps veering to the right to appease the Bible thumpers, would be strutting out the porn?” she asked after noting that “[f]or a party that has been swimming in red ink, any help should be recognized.”
Convention Chairman Chris Comfort repeatedly asked attendees to support the sponsors. One might imagine the company so eye-catchingly displayed on badge lanyards to be one of those. It wasn’t until two hours into the meeting of more than 3,000 local delegates that someone pointed out to County Chairman Bernie Zadrowski, a deputy district attorney by day, that ElegantAngel.com is neither particularly elegant nor in any way angelic.
“Elegant Angel is a Canoga Park, CA, firm owned by Patrick Collins, a porn director…,” Neff wrote. “It’s not for the squeamish or those under 18, or pretty much anyone who wrote the family platform planks at the convention.”
Hilarity, as they say, ensued as badges quietly and unceremoniously were stripped from the necks of convention organizers. Neff said the word never got to the majority of delegates, however, and it certainly didn’t get to the media.
Comfort later explained that the lanyards had been discovered in the party’s offices. Leftovers from other conventions frequently end up in the party’s offices, he said, through the largesse of party faithful who hope unclaimed swag might be useful in banishing some of the aforementioned red ink. Evidently, the lanyards were left over from AVN’s Adult Entertainment Expo in January.
The lanyards, he continued, must have been planted by covert Democratic operatives as part of an election-year prank to embarrass their conservative rivals. He also was quick to assure the faithful that the GOP hadn’t intentionally accepted donations or swag from smut peddlers.
Although Zadrowski denied being “a conspiracy theorist,” he too seemed prepared to believe a conspiracy was afoot.
“I can’t imagine a good Republican bringing these by [county GOP headquarters],” he told Neff. “A good Republican wouldn’t purposely bring that.”
Elegant Angel representative Travis Graham told Neff his company was not complicit in the embarrassing assault on the Clark County GOP’s dignity.
“No, we did not sponsor the Clark County Republican Convention,” he wrote to her in an email. “I am wondering how this came about? Do you have any pictures?”
“Who knows what else the party’s got?” Neff wondered slyly. She added, “Nobody’s complained. Maybe they’re all too busy supporting the ‘sponsors.’”
