Assemblyman Steven Brooks could be first Nevadan expelled from legislature

A Democrat representing Las Vegas could go down in Nevada history as the first lawmaker to be expelled from the legislature.

Assemblyman Steven Brooks has been arrested twice in the past two months. He’s threatened to physically injure a Democratic Party leader. And he’s been forcibly detained in a hospital to undergo a mental evaluation, The Associated Press reports. Lawmakers have had enough.

They’re considering whether or not to boot him from office, AP says. A select committee is meeting Tuesday evening to decide.

Mr. Brooks is expected to attend the meeting — and if he does, it’s one of the few legislative affairs he’ll have attended. He was seated on Feb. 4, but was banished from the legislature’s building a week later and hasn’t participated in votes since, AP says.

“It’s been an unfortunate situation that clearly has been more than a minimal distraction,” said Assembly Majority Leader William Horne, D-Las Vegas, who is leading the seven-member bipartisan panel, as cited by AP.

Mr. Brooks’ background includes an arrest in January for threatening Assembly Speaker Marilyn Kirkpatrick. Shortly after, police responded to his grandmother’s home for a domestic issue, AP says. Then he was arrested on Feb. 10 for a domestic disturbance involving his wife. In between, he did some modeling of sorts for the local newspaper: AP reports he posed shirtless for one of the paper’s photographers.