In her next election, Augustine said her opponent, Democratic state senator and teacher Lori Lipman Brown, "opposed prayer." In fact, Brown, who is Jewish, had asked for a nondenominational approach to the Senate's opening prayer. "There is a difference," the mailer said. One former aide testified that she was "a screamer and a yeller and a pounder on the desk." Another said Augustine told her to kill her diabetic cat because its illness had become a distraction at the office.ĭuring one election, critics labeled her a bigot after she sent voters a mailer showing a side-by-side comparison of the candidates - on one side, a crystalline photo of Augustine, blond and shiny-toothed, and on the other, a dark, grainy photo of her opponent, who was black. "She had that kind of charisma."īut she was also a demanding perfectionist - and that's how her friends put it. "She would walk into a room and light it up," said her brother, Phil Alfano, a high-school principal in Modesto, Calif. Her brisk walk, bright blazers and polished brooches projected an air of conservatism and competence. She joined all 18 Republican women's clubs in Nevada and traveled to remote areas to attend their functions. Her success in Nevada's good-old-boy network made her a champion among Republican women. She moved to Las Vegas in 1988 and soon became a top Republican, elected to the Assembly, then the state Senate, then as controller, making her Nevada's chief financial officer.
She built a résumé marked by ambition - a bachelor's degree in political science, a master's in public administration, a congressional internship, a chamber of commerce leadership program. Kathy Augustine, the oldest of three siblings, grew up in Southern California. But this much is clear: Both Augustines are dead, Higgs is in jail and a gravesite has been torn up.Įven in Nevada, where the standard for spectacle and scandal is high, the saga has mesmerized the political class. Police are still piecing together what happened next. She spent long hours at the hospital, where she leaned on one of the nurses, a former Navy corpsman named Chaz Higgs. That promising career, though, would end prematurely. She jumped into Nevada politics and rose to statewide office with a single-mindedness that left her with more admirers than friends.
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She had big dreams, and she knew how to work a room. LAS VEGAS - Kathy Augustine was a flight attendant, but everybody knew that wouldn't last.
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