Being a Gay Mayor in Rural Nevada

By John M. Glionna, Las Vegas Review-Journal, November 25, 2019

PHOTOGRAPH by Chase Stevens

ELY — In January, on the advice of friends that included his seventh grade English teacher and Cub Scout den mother, Nathan Robertson made up his mind: He was going to run for mayor in this year’s June elections. 

He even had his campaign slogan, “More Planning. Fewer Potholes.” 

Robertson’s roots date back five generations in this isolated rural town founded as a stagecoach station along the old Pony Express route.

His Mormon ancestors worked in the local mines and on nearby ranches. His father and grandfather have served as the town’s optometrist.

At 35, Robertson has his own personal stake here. And he disapproved of many older residents elected to public office merely because they were available, he says, who brought personal agendas and political axes.

A local businessman who’d returned to Ely after attending college and performing Mormon missionary work, Robertson wanted to bring the voice of a new generation to this mining community of 4,000 residents in the state’s eastern reaches.

Still, close friends cautioned him, “Have you really thought about this?” 

The concern wasn’t just possible age bias, that he’d be one of the youngest mayors ever elected in conservative White Pine County, which had voted for Donald Trump in 2016 by a whopping 72 percent. 

There was something else.

He was gay.

And still, Robertson won, and by a wide margin — 527 votes to 235 — more than doubling the count of opponent Ed Spear, a self-described redneck cowboy.

With his unlikely victory, Robertson actually became Nevada’s second gay mayor. The first didn’t come from urban areas like Las Vegas or Reno, but the tiny town of West Wendover, just 120 miles northeast of Ely, along the Utah border.

At age 28, Daniel Corona is also a fifth generation resident who returned to rural Nevada after several years away. Like Robertson, he didn’t flinch at being gay when it came to running for public office.

Some suggest rural Nevada’s two gay mayors could represent a sea-change in the cultural attitudes of small-town America, where a generation ago gay men and women fled to cosmopolitan Miami, Los Angeles and San Francisco, just be be themselves.

For both Robertson and Corona, their deep local roots may have played a role in their neighbors ignoring lifestyles they might otherwise find objectionable. The blood of a generations-old family presence in a community, experts believe, just might be thicker than the water of sexual preference.

“These rural communities can be accepting of a local boy or girl made good,” said Gregory Hinton, a gay historian and curator of “Out West,” a national museum program series inspired by his own upbringing in small-town Cody, Wyo. 

“They’ve seen them grow up as children and know their sexual preferences don’t necessarily define them, that it’s just one of their characteristics. The kid might now be a cross-dresser but he’s our cross-dresser.”

Corona agrees. You can home home again, even if you’re gay in rural America. “It depends on your family,” he says.

For his part, Robertson didn’t believe that being gay should disqualify him from pubic office. For three years, he and partner Shadrach Michaels, a local schoolteacher-turned newspaper reporter, had shared a home across the street from Robertson’s grandparents. He’d neither flaunted nor hid his sexuality.

Sure, the couple had occasionally held hands and even embraced in public, but no one had ever voiced disapproval, not even during his mayoral campaign. 

During his candidacy, Robertson never mentioned he was gay. “It’s not like people didn’t know,” he says over a bowl of soup at a local restaurant. “But I think it counts for something if people around here know you, know your family. I’m a private person and I did not want to defend my personal life in public.”

Roberson insists he does not fit any stereotype, gay or otherwise.

He works construction, collects old cars, and can rebuild an old engine on his garage floor. He gets along with his parents and only came out when he was in his early 30s. He wouldn’t attend a gay pride parade even if he lived in West Hollywood.

“That’s not me, that’s not who I am,” he said. “You have a right to be who you are. Even if you’re gay, you don’t have to put on a feather boa, if that’s not you.”

While few Ely residents publicly brought up the issue of Robertson’s sexual identity, some here say it remained right there beneath the surface.

“There was definitely a lot of whispering,” said Andy Bath, a school friend who co-owns a pharmacy in town. “For some people, it was a red flag. If anything, it was more with the LDS church. There was a lot of concern after the fact. And it looks like the majority of those people did not vote for him.”

Robertson’s lifestyle has cost him a voice in his chosen faith. When he moved in with Michaels, he was ex-communicated, no longer allowed to take an active role in church life. He still attends weekly services.

But it just wasn’t the churchgoers who resisted. After Robertson won an early mayoral primary race, the loser approached Bath, using a slur often applied to gays.

“He said ‘I can’t believe this f….. won.’ It took me by surprise. And I told him, ‘Well, you lost fair and square.’ It just showed how much things need to change in Ely.”

John Chachas says Robertson attended grade school with his daughters. Over the years, he’s become paternal to the new mayor.

“I love that kid,” he says, his voice breaking.

But Chachas, an insurance agent and former councilman, also knows the political slant that pervades his hometown. When told Robertson insists there were no cross burnings, he said jokingly, “Well, Nate was out of town that weekend.”

Many others supported Robertson, he said.

“Despite any criticism, he holds his head of high in this community. This is Ely, Nevada. It’s home to hunters, rednecks and cowboys. How was Nathan even thinking that he was ever going to beat old-timer Eddy Spear? 

“But he spanked him good. And he sent a message.”

Ely has demonstrated a narrow small-town mindset in other ways. Earlier this year, a city councilman questioned whether council candidate and mother Michelle Beecher could fulfill her public duties while raising a family. 

Beecher lost that initial seat to Spear, but has since been appointed to another. She also hopes new blood will bring change. “I hope it says that Ely is forward thinking and that people can see past those things they may not like about a candidate.”

Spears says he doesn’t care about Robertson’s personal life: “I’ve known his family forever and I think we need to vote on people’s merits, not their sexual orientation.”

Yet one official criticized Robertson for public displays of affection. “He went to an event, holding hands and flaunting with his husband, doing things even a heterosexual wouldn’t do,” said the person, who asked not to be named. “That leaves a sour taste.”

In West Wendover, Daniel Corona did not campaign as a gay candidate in his 2016 mayoral run, yet he has been outspoken on so-called LGBTQ issues.

Corona came out when he was just 16. Today, the town of 5,000 has scores of gay residents, he says. He recently posted on his facebook page: “In 2016 I became the first openly LGBTQ person in any city in Nevada to be elected to serve as mayor. This shouldn’t matter, but it does,” he wrote.

“Until the day that kids are no longer thrown out of their homes & onto the streets because they want to live openly & authentically, until the day that trans people especially trans people of color no longer have to constantly look over their shoulders with the fear of being brutally murdered, until the day that we can no longer be fired from our jobs or evicted from our homes for living openly & authentically we will continue to celebrate LGBTQ+ representation.”

Still, the issue of Corona’s sexuality was mentioned in the election, not even by his opponent. “It never occurred to me,” said incumbent mayor Emily Carter. “It’s sad that it’s even an issue in some places.”

Corona says his critics have singled him out in other ways. Some say he was elected in a town with a large Latino population because of his Hispanic surname. He’s been dismissed as the “Marijuana Mayor” for efforts to bring the cannabis industry here.

Others snicker over the fact that he still lives with his mother and often rides with her to work when she reports to her job at the adjacent police department.

Gary Corona, a captain in the West Wendover fire department, insists most people don’t judge his son harshly: “Our family has been in this town long enough that people know him. He’s a person and he’s a good man. That’s all that matters.”

Corona has received a few vulgar emails over his sexual preferences, but he takes them in stride. “If the only thing you can criticize is my sexuality,” he says, “then I must be doing a good job.”

Corona’s most telling encounter came while knocking on doors during his campaign, an experience he says shows how far rural Nevadans have come when it comes to cultural acceptance, and how much work still needs to be done.

“Let me ask you a question,” one man asked. “I’ve heard a rumor around town. Are you one of those trans people?”

Corona said he wasn’t.

“Are you gay?” the man asked.

“Yes,”Corona said.

“Well,” the man answered. “That’s OK, then.”

In Ely, Nathan Robertson continues to fight the gay stereotype.

When he came out a few years ago, a family member asked, “Does this mean you’re going to start wearing pink and speaking with a lisp?” His grandmother, who lives across the street, still sends he and his partner separate Christmas cards.

Michaels, who has lived in Los Angeles and San Francisco, is more attuned to any anti-gay current in town. When he worked as a middle school teacher, parents told him they didn’t want their children in his classroom because he was gay.

He had doubts about moving to such a small rural place, but Robertson assured him that Ely had a gay population: “He said there was an interracial lesbian couple,” he laughs, “but I’ve lived here three years now, and I’ve never seen them.”

Months into his job, Robertson goes about his work, walking the town in his baseball cap, jeans and flannel shirt, working on his cars, driving the old beater he bought in Salt Lake City for $500, the one he jokingly calls the “meth-mobile.”

He refuses to recognize any anti-gay conspiracies, saying he “doesn’t lose any sleep” over people who won’t approach him with issues they might have with his sexuality.

Michaels is proud of his partner. 

“Nathan wants to be the best mayor he can be,” he says. “We warned him people here were going to insist on giving this gay guy a run for his money. But he threw caution to the wind and did it anyway, because he loves this town.”

But he still ribs Robertson about his subtle approach to his sexuality.

The other night, he gestured to his partner and laughed.

“He’s terrible at being gay.”

Robertson blushed.

“Yeah,” he said. “I guess I am.”