Along the rows of hardhat-wearing dignitaries turning shovels of dirt at the future site of a 96-bed nursing home in Sparks on Monday were some unlikely characters — lawmakers who voted against funding for the Northern Nevada Veterans Home.

Two Republican Assembly members — Jim Wheeler and Lisa Krasner — attended the groundbreaking along with a half-dozen other members of the Legislature even though they had voted against a bill that contained $346 million in capital improvement projects (CIP), including $38 million for the nursing home. Their votes against the universally popular veterans home were part of what was an ultimately unsuccessful Republican hardball negotiating tactic aimed at forcing Democrats to support the Education Savings Accounts program.

“We promised our constituents we would vote against any two-thirds bill until we got ESAs. That simple,” Wheeler told The Nevada Independent. “Nobody’s voting against veterans. Check my voting record. I voted for veterans every time. I sponsored bills for veterans every session.”

Krasner had much the same response in an email.

Many Republicans had vowed even before the legislative session began that they would not support a budget if it didn’t include funding for the ESA program, which allows parents to claim a majority of their child’s per-pupil state education allotment and use it for private school tuition or other qualified education expenses. In the waning days of the session, as it looked increasingly unlikely that the Democrats in the majority would get on board with a program they loathe, Republicans stumbled upon a valuable trump card in the CIP.

The hefty bill is laced with non-controversial roofing repairs and HVAC improvements for state facilities as well as money for politically popular college academic buildings and the veterans home. It needed a two-thirds vote in the Legislature to pass, and failed when Republicans banded together and voted against it for leverage.

In the tense days that followed, Democrats staged a press conference chastising Republicans for holding up the veterans home in their quest to secure ESAs.

“Yesterday, sadly, because of partisan politics our colleagues on the other side of the aisle told our veterans ‘no’,” said Democratic Sen. Pat Spearman, a veteran. “At the end of the day, $33 million just isn’t a whole lot of money when it comes to honoring the service and sacrifice of Nevada veterans and their families.”

Eventually, the two sides struck a deal that included $20 million for a private school scholarship program but not ESAs, and a handful of Republican lawmakers abandoned their hardline stance and voted for the CIP bill to end the standoff. They included Sens. Heidi Gansert, Ben Kieckhefer and Becky Harris, as well as Assembly members Chris Edwards, John Hambrick, Al Kramer, Keith Pickard, Jill Tolles, Melissa Woodbury and Paul Anderson.

“We’ll come back to fight that fight another day,” said Assembly Republican Leader Anderson, to the chagrin of some ESA supporters who feel he and Sandoval had a priceless negotiating chip in the CIP bill and should have forced a special session to wear down Democrats and pass the bill.

Lawmakers have taken different approaches on attending events for bills they opposed. Senate Republican Leader Michael Roberson declined to attend a budget bill signing ceremony with the three other legislative leaders on the final day of the session; Gov. Brian Sandoval indicated that was because Roberson felt it would be hypocritical since he led the “No ESA, No Budget” charge.

But Wheeler, an Air Force veteran himself who acknowledged it was tough to oppose a bill that contained the project, said he didn’t see a problem with showing up to celebrate a long-awaited groundbreaking that wouldn’t have come to pass if all Republicans voted as he did.

“Saying that those two things are exclusive of each other is ridiculous,” he said. “It got passed, didn’t it?”

Updated at 2 p.m. on July 19, 2017 to add comment from Krasner.