Three Republicans vie in primary race for Clark County Public Administrator 

Former Clark County Coroner Michael Murphy, real estate agent Don Salazar, and businessman Mark Sprinkle are hoping to win the Republican race for public administrator, the office which manages estates for individuals who die without a will or absent family to take control of property. 

Michael Murphy

Murphy served as coroner from 2002 to 2015. His office was the inspiration for CSI, a popular network television program.  

He has become known as Clark County’s fix-it guy, stepping in to assume leadership of several agencies.

County management, he says, “started using me for departments that were either having trouble or where they needed a little extra assistance,” such as in Clark County Division of Juvenile Justice, which he ran while serving as coroner, putting in six hours a day at each job, he says. He also served as Clark County’s legislative lobbyist in 2013 and 2015. 

Upon retiring in 2015, he worked for the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in Washington, D.C. before being called back to serve as acting coroner when John Fudenberg took early retirement during the Covid pandemic in 2020.

In 2022, Clark County hired Murphy to restore order in the Public Administrator’s office, where then-Public Administrator Rob Telles was embroiled in scandal. Just months later, Telles murdered Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter Jeff German, who was investigating allegations of wrongdoing by Telles. 

“I want the opportunity to go there and finish what I started,” Murphy said during a recent interview. He has the support of much of the office’s staff, many of whom attended a recent campaign event on his behalf. “I think they are concerned about who is going to come in. I know that I have their support and I believe it’s because they know I can get in and get it done.”

Murphy notes that when Telles was arrested, Clark County was unable to remove him from office. “The concern was if he gets out on bail, he could come back to work, and many of the employees were terrified he was going to come in the door.”

Clark County proposed a change in the law to allow large counties to appoint the public administrator. “There was not an appetite in the Legislature for that to happen.” 

Murphy says he’s marketing his name and reputation in his bid for election. 

“I know the people in Henderson and North Las Vegas, and in Laughlin and Overton, so I don’t have to start from scratch,” he says. “I have a good reputation for getting the work done.”

He’s also experienced in dealing with the bereaved – as coroner and from 2008 through 2015, when budget cuts prompted the coroner’s office to perform duties of the public administrator on overnight cases.

“If I hadn’t been coroner, I wouldn’t know anything about running the public administrator’s office,” he said. 

If elected, Murphy says he’ll increase outreach to seniors in an attempt to ensure fewer people die without a will. He says he’d also like to have investigators fitted with bodycams and the ability to barcode, or “bag and tag” inventory in the field. A recent case turned up close to $200,000 in cash and hundreds of weapons – a scenario that frequently raises questions about integrity. “We need policies to protect beneficiaries and heirs, as well as employees.” 

Murphy entered public service out of high school as a police cadet in Kansas City. In 1980 he moved to Southern Nevada and went to work for the Boulder City Police Department. A decade later he was hired as Mesquite’s Chief of Police. He later went to work for City of Las Vegas Detention and Enforcement, which is now the Dept. of Public Safety. 

Today he serves as a consultant, providing resiliency training for first responders and traveling the U.S., teaching adult and juvenile death investigations. 

If elected, he’d be the first Republican to hold the office, which he believes should be an appointed or non-partisan position. “The public administrator, the coroner, the sheriff – We don’t serve our party. We serve the public.”

Murphy, who has never run for office, says he’s surprised by the lack of prerequisites for candidates. “If you can plunk down $105, you’re in.” 

He suspects in down ballot races “people are not scrutinizing the candidates as well as they should” and questions whether “we’re getting quality people in there. The vast majority of people don’t even know what the office does. We absolutely want you to exercise your right to vote. But if you don’t know the candidates, don’t just vote for the party, because you might end up with some wild card. You should be voting for the candidate.”  

Murphy raised $35,000 in the first quarter and has just under $20,000 in the bank. He is endorsed by Veterans in Politics and the Nevada Veterans Association. 

Donald Salazar

Salazar, a real estate agent, is making his first bid for public office. 

“I’m going to rely heavily on my background and my experiences in business,” he said.
“I am not a politician.”

Salazar says he’s been in sales most of his life. “I have a strong sales, management, and customer service background.”

He did a “short stint” as a corrections officer in his home state of New Mexico before coming to Southern Nevada in 1988, where he’s worked in banking, mortgage lending, and most recently, real estate, obtaining a license in 2017. 

Salazar says he was unaware of the public administrator’s office until he learned of Telles’ role in German’s murder, and identified it as a “great position to be able to use my skills in aiding our increasing senior community. I believe that there’s going to be several situations, maybe not in every case, when a senior citizen or someone passes without a will or trust, where my skills will come in handy.”

If he wins, he intends to “visit the office, talk with the management, speak with the employees, and have an opportunity to review policies and procedures.” 

His “goal on day one is to be able to set expectations, but also do some team building. I believe that being a businessman and having a business man’s approach will be something that will be useful for the department in serving the community.”

Salazar acknowledges he’d be “a novice coming into this position, I would need to do a lot of homework.” He’s acted as an estate administrator twice for relatives. 

Salazar is the second candidate in the election for public administrator who works for Compass Realty. His colleague at Compass, Edgar Velazquez, a candidate in the Democratic primary, is appealing a judge’s ruling that removed him from serving as an estate administrator.

Salazar, who says he works for himself but hangs his license at Compass, says he was unaware of Velazquez’ legal case until he learned of it in the Current. He says the two never consulted about seeking the elected office. 

Salazar has raised no money, according to his first quarter filing with the Secretary of State. 

Mark Sprinkle 

Sprinkle says he’s the most qualified candidate in the race because he’s a veteran.  

“I’ll bring discipline, organization and real world experience to this office,” he told the Current. “As an Army veteran, I live by a set of core values, loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity and personal courage, and I’ll demand that of everyone who works there as well.”

Sprinkle has never run for office but says he’s “worked on a bunch of campaigns, electing Republicans on all levels of government.” Among his successful campaigns were Las Vegas City Council wins for Bob Beers and Victoria Seaman. 

He says the killing of Charlie Kirk “and all the people who were out celebrating it really motivated me on a certain level, and I knew I had to get involved.”

He acknowledges political violence is a bipartisan problem. “We’re all on the same side,” he said. “Social media has really connected us in a way that’s not healthy.” 

Sprinkle is a small business owner.

“I resell things, especially on eBay,” he says, adding he attends the public administrator’s auctions. “I’ve gotten to be really good friends with the people who run that auction house, and they started telling me all about it. It piqued my interest (in running), for sure.”

The experience, he says, gives him an understanding of what happens on all end of this job.” 

Asked if he intends to patronize the auctions if elected, Sprinkle says he “probably won’t have any time to even focus on my business if I’m working full time for the county.”

Sprinkle, like Murphy, says he’d like to “have body cameras on everybody who’s going into someone’s home.”

Sprinkle says he’s “been in charge in office situations and of personnel before, and I think I’m a pretty good boss.” Articulating his qualifications “is kind of a tough question because there really are no qualifications for this job. I try to just be involved in public service pretty much that entire time, starting even just from being a lifeguard and a swimming instructor at the YMCA.” 

Sprinkle, who says his father was in the Army, moved a lot as a child. The family ended up 32 years ago in Carson City, where Sprinkle attended high school before moving to Southern Nevada to attend UNLV, where he earned a degree in Political Science. He attended Boyd Law School for “a couple of years, but I ended up leaving.” 

He landed an internship with then-U.S. Sen. John Ensign. “They offered me a job on Capitol Hill, so I took that and never looked back.”  

Sprinkle raised about $1,500 in the first quarter and has $728 on hand. 

“One of the hard things for me to do is ask people for money. Even as someone who has worked on campaigns, that was always the toughest part. I really don’t like it, so I’m trying to show people that you can run a great campaign and a winning campaign without too much money.”

He says he believes the election for public administrator should be a non-partisan race. 

The winner of the primary race will square off with one of three Democratic contenders in the general election.