QUESTION 9 PROMOTER NOT JUST BLOWIN' SMOKE

SOME NEVADANS want to take a phrase from the Lone Star State to help fight
the marijuana ballot initiative.

Don't mess with Nevada, they tell Texan Billy Rogers, who moved to Las
Vegas in May to start collecting what would be 110,000 signatures from
residents statewide to put Question 9 on the ballot.

But Rogers, whose soft-spoken drawl and black cowboy boots might make him
at first glance a foreigner to Nevada, is no stranger to politics.

He's a tough, seasoned political operative who likes Nevada and, more than
that, likes his chances with the initiative.

Rogers was raised in a politically active family in Austin, Texas, and cut
his campaign teeth back in 1976 when Jimmy Carter ran for president and he
helped his parents work on then-Sen. Lloyd Bentsen's re-election.

The Carter campaign noticed the 14-year-old and carted him off to New York
City for what would be his first national convention. He's been hooked ever
since.

Roger's father was president of a newspaper union, later becoming involved
with the state's AFL-CIO, and eventually serving as campaign manager for a
Democrat's losing bid for Texas governor in 1978.

His mom also managed a gubernatorial campaign. After sending Ann Richards
to the mansion, Roger's mother also served a stint as Richards' chief of staff.

"I'm just a yellow dog Democrat from Texas," Rogers explains of his
political family -- the first in Texas in which father, mother and son have
all run campaigns for governor.

Rogers' campaign came in 1998 when he managed Garry Mauro's bid to unseat
George W. Bush. Mauro lost by 36 percentage points, but Rogers gained
experience squaring off against Karen Hughes and Karl Rove.

Bush's handlers were tough opponents, Rogers said, but unlike some of those
he's encountered here in Nevada, he claims they were fair.

"I believe there ought to be civility in politics," Rogers said.

After a few months in Nevada, Rogers says, he almost longs for foes like
Rove, who is now President Bush's political adviser.

"The opposition to Question 9 has made an issue out of me not being from
Nevada," Rogers said. "Speaker after speaker at a recent rally referred to
me as evil and asked why I don't sell drugs back in Texas."

Rogers said he has smoked, but hasn't sold marijuana. Rogers gave up
smoking marijuana 15 years ago, he said, when: "I grew up and didn't enjoy
it anymore."

The reason he's here, and not in Texas, is that his new boss -- the
Marijuana Policy Project -- thinks Nevada is the most likely state to
support legalization of three ounces of marijuana for those 21 and older.

"This issue has the most support out West," Rogers said. "It will pass in
the next five years somewhere, either in California, Oregon or Colorado.
But, I think this state is going to be the first in the historic national
movement."

Opponents, like Gary Booker of the district attorney's office and narcotics
detective Todd Raybuck, think Nevada is more like a guinea pig for the
MPP's social experiment and view Rogers -- drawl and all -- as the Dr. Jeckyl.

Rogers likes it here, not just because he says many Nevadans have "welcomed
him with open arms," but because he learned to enjoy our blackjack tables
and sports books over the past 20 years as a tourist.

And Rogers philosophically believes that possession of small amounts of
marijuana should not take police away from more pressing concerns. A good
friend of his in Dallas, an attorney, still smokes several joints a week.

"He doesn't drink," Rogers said. "It's like his whiskey or his beer. He
sits out by the pool and it helps him unwind."

The 41-year-old Rogers is committed to the issue. But he's not necessarily
tied enough to Texas to go back anytime soon. He already spent three years
in Russia starting an English-language magazine, the Moscow Guardian, and
likes what he's found in Nevada.

"I might just stay here," he says, his smile hinting that Question 9 will
pass and give him reason to hang out for two more years.

If the measure, which is strongly opposed by law enforcement, does somehow
pass, it'll be back on the ballot in 2004 for a final vote to amend the
constitution and allow for legal possession starting in January of 2005.

That'll be the same election in which Bush might think we've forgotten
about Yucca Mountain and come back to thank us for what in 2000 were our
measly four electoral votes that put him in office.

And you can bet Bush will have to Texas two-step around an old foe, who
might be stumping for the Democrat saying "Don't mess with Nevada."