LAS VEGAS (AP) - Joe Neal, Nevada’s first Black state senator and a two-time candidate for governor, died Thursday night. He was 85.
Neal’s death was “a tragic loss for Nevada,” Gov. Steve Sisolak, a fellow Democrat, said Friday on Twitter. “Joe Neal was a pioneer, a fearless fighter and a voice for people often overlooked in this state.”
Neal’s daughter, state Sen. Dina Neal, and his former campaign manager, Andrew Barbano, said in a statement that Joe Neal “apparently succumbed to multiple system failure” following an unspecified illness.
Neal served in the Nevada Senate from 1973 to 2003, according to his legislative biography.
“He was always a champion for the little guy,” U.S. Rep. Dina Titus, a Democrat who served alongside Neal in the state Senate told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in 2019.
Neal was the first Black person to become a major party nominee for Nevada governor, losing the 2002 general election to Republican Kenny Guinn. He ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination in 1998, losing to Las Vegas Mayor Jan Laverty Jones.
Neal’s wife, Estelle Deconge Neal, died in 1997. They had five children, 10 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
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This story has been updated to correct that the governor’s name is Steve Sisolak, not Steve Sebelius.
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