Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske sits for a rare interview in her high-ceilinged office in the historic state capitol building, wearing a sweater adorned with a sparkling Christmas tree. Nevada’s top election administrator has just wrapped up her staff holiday party — an event to which she invited her successor, a Democrat with whom she’s been in regular communication since the election to ensure a smooth transfer of power.
In the hyper-politicized world of elections, some have hailed the 71-year-old, termed-out Republican a hero of democracy for standing firm when members of her own party sought to overturn Nevada’s 2020 presidential results. She moderated the Zoom call where six electors cast votes for Joe Biden on Dec. 14, 2020 — the same day that another six self-declared electors stood outside the statehouse casting illegitimate votes for then-President Donald Trump, even though he lost the popular vote.
The very legality of the actual electors’ votes hinged, in part, on Cegavske’s presence at the ceremony. The Republicans who participated in the illegitimate ceremony without her, but apparently discussed trying to get her to join in, are under federal investigation.
Cegavske is unassuming about her job, even though she has declined her fair share of interviews (“my job isn’t always having my name in the paper,” she says) and acknowledges she at one point declined to take an incoming call from Air Force One (“I don’t remember much about it,” she says about that incident). And she said she was surprised when officials at UNR said they wanted to store documents and artifacts related to her time in office for historical purposes.
“I never ever thought of myself as a hero. We just follow the law,” she said of her actions as secretary of state. “I just stuck up for the law because I thought that was the right thing to do, which it was.”