Over the years that I’ve followed Michele Fiore’s careening and chaotic political career, I’ve been struck not just by the audacity of her behavior, but also by the strange loyalty she still managed to engender in her supporters.

That fealty may at last be ending with her conviction Thursday in federal court on conspiracy and wire fraud charges related to her conversion of thousands of dollars to private use that were donated under the false guise of raising funds for a memorial to murdered Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department veteran Alyn Beck.

As a public figure, Fiore didn’t just embarrass herself on occasion. She lived with her hand in controversy’s cookie jar. None of it seemed to matter to her true believers.

Elected to the state Assembly in 2012, she rose inside a Republican Party apparatus weakened by its hard veer to the right. She lost her lawmaking mojo, but her fans forgave her suspicious bookkeeping and more than $1 million in tax liens related to her operation of a shuttered home health company.

Ever the self-promoter, Fiore was cheered when she inserted herself into the dangerous protests and 2014 armed standoff with federal agents promoted by Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and his sons. Until she was added to a witness list, she made her presence known during the trials of gunmen and Constitutional cowboys alike.

Like so many of her blowhard brothers and sisters in the current era of Nevada’s Republican Party, she claimed a love of America and the rule of law even as she helped enable Bundy’s trampling of it. Her effort at chaos-making did nothing to hurt her personal political brand. By 2016, she made a run for Congress and lost the primary, but burnished her self-image as a brassy “Brooklyn girl.”

She was made to order during the rise of Donald Trump, when epithets, threats and conspiracy theories became accepted as political discourse. Swaggering, potty-mouthed Michele, her supporters said, was just keepin’ it real.

As a Las Vegas City councilwoman, she would rise to mayor pro-tem, but also court trouble with constituents, spar with fellow councilmembers and physically shove ex-council pal Victoria Seaman. She floated dangerous conspiracy theories during the COVID-19 pandemic, was widely criticized for using bigoted language, and generated ethics complaints prior to her 2020 resignation.

That did nothing to prevent her from mounting amply funded but unsuccessful campaigns for governor and state treasurer. The Democrats laughed, then nearly dropped their dentures when she finished just 1.7-percentage points behind winner Zach Conine in the 2022 state treasurer’s race. In the closest treasurer’s race in the nation, she received more than 450,000 votes.

Undaunted by a narrow defeat, she used her juice with ethically challenged officials in Nye County to be handed a lucrative position as Pahrump's justice of the peace despite the fact she likely didn’t live in the community. Oh, what she could reveal about the underhanded capers that go on there.

By then, however, her well-known use of her daughter’s event planning business as a dodge to transfer campaign funds had been replaced by a much more repugnant hustle: Using the heartbreaking memory of the June 8, 2014, shooting deaths of Beck and his Metro partner Igor Soldo by two self-styled revolutionaries who had pledged loyalty to Bundy’s battle with the federal government. 

The Beck memorial had already been paid for at the time Fiore was hitting up her usual list of soft touches. Some of their names will sound familiar. Although dozens of contributors were in the witness list, the testimony of Gov. Joe Lombardo, developer Peter Palivos, former Henderson Mayor Robert Groesbeck, and Laborers Local 872 executive-treasurer Tommy White served to bury Fiore with jurors.

FBI agents traced those donations to Fiore’s political PAC and nonprofit officially intended for the construction of the memorial. The money was instead used for everything from rent to her daughter’s wedding, even plastic surgery.

She is scheduled for sentencing on Jan. 6. Her daughter Sheena Siegel, who received thousands of dollars intended for other purposes, hasn’t been charged with a crime. Fiore faces decades in prison, but so far, this disgraced “public servant” gets to keep her state retirement.

If it’s any solace to taxpayers and the families of those she’s ripped off, at least she’ll finally have to start paying for her life choices out of her own pocket.

John L. Smith is an author and longtime columnist. He was born in Henderson and his family’s Nevada roots go back to 1881. His stories have appeared in New Lines, Time, Readers Digest, Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast, Reuters and Desert Companion, among others.