Taj Ainlay, 5th from left, white beard, joins other Sierra Club activists to close down the Reid-Gardner coal-fired power plant.
In 2008, while working as the campaign manager for a State Assembly race, Taj approached the Southern Nevada Group (SNG) of the Sierra Club, seeking a political endorsement for his candidate, Democratic Nominee Andrew Martin. Rita Ransom, a member of the SNG Executive Committee (ExCom), invited Taj to attend the committee's next meeting, where it became clear that the Group had no mechanism for local endorsements. To serve that purpose, Rita and then-Group Chair Kris Cunningham suggested that Taj join them and help organize a political committee (PolCom).
After the November elections, Taj volunteered as the SNG Membership Chair. He joined the Group ExCom in January 2009 and was elected Vice Chair. Soon after that, the Toiyabe Chapter arranged for Taj to take the Sierra Club's three-day political training in Washington, D.C., focusing on the endorsements process. That training in October laid the groundwork for forming a Chapter PolCom and organizing a slate of locally endorsed candidates for the Nevada Senate, Assembly, and Gubernatorial elections in mid-2010.
In late 2010, when Kris Cunningham accepted her company's job offer to transfer to the East Coast, Taj moved up from Vice Chair to Chair, a position he would retain for the next 10 years. It would be a decade of highs and lows economically, politically, and environmentally, which saw Taj wear several Chapter hats, including Political Chair, Compliance Officer, SNG Voting Representative, and member of the Bylaws Task Force, which introduced term limits for Chapter ExCom members in January 2018. For the SNG, Taj has also served terms as Group Treasurer, Political Chair, Programs Chair, Webmaster, and interim Outings Chair.
Of the many events and activities that Taj has led for the Sierra Club, one of his favorite memories is of the SNG's 50th Anniversary Banquet hosted in October 2015 for 120 members and friends at the Divine Café of Springs Preserve. People still talk about that evening, even today. Another treasured memory is of the hugely successful Earth Day 50 Art & Essay Contest and subsequent Awards Celebration, which won for the Toiyabe Chapter the Sierra Club's 2020 Communication Award.
While representing the SNG over the years, Taj has been honored to share the podium at events with Congresswoman Dina Titus, Washington Governor Jay Inslee, and former Executive Director of the Sierra Club Carl Pope. Taj played a part in the Beyond Coal Campaign's accelerated closure of the Reid-Gardner Power Plant in Moapa in 2014-17 as well as in the designation of Tule Springs Fossil Beds as a National Monument in 2014.
The bonds of friendship Taj has gained through Sierra Club activities are strong and enduring. SNG leaders and volunteers come and go, but Taj says they are like family, never far from his thoughts or heart. He counts his broad circle of contacts as one of the added blessings of Sierra Club involvement. If Taj has one regret, it is that the climate crisis deepened during four years of denial in Washington (2017-20), which only proves how essential political involvement is to solving our environmental problems. Taj was grateful that the Club stepped up in a big way for the 2020 General Election, including so many Toiyabe Chapter members.
Those who know him best are aware that Taj retired from an international career of advertising, marketing, and publishing in 2014. He is a Buddhist, a straight-ticket Democrat, a reducetarian, and a guarded optimist, who loves Las Vegas and the music of the 60s. Taj's daughters, 33 & 29, both work in Tokyo, where they live with their Japanese mother; he has a younger sister in San Rafael, California; and his mother, 90, lives in Honolulu with her fourth husband. (Go Mom!)
When Taj is not volunteering for the Sierra Club as an SNG ExCom member or working on a political campaign, he enjoys cooking, reading, and watching DVDs borrowed from the library. Taj is currently writing his tell-all memoirs and likes to joke, "If you want to be left out, make me an offer."
Taj, thank you for all your work and dedication. You have made Sierra Club and Southern Nevada better!