. >> reporter: tellis in a jailhouse interview with our affiliate ktmb denies the allegations. >> it'salse. and, you know, i -- the work that we did in that office was -- was very important, very good. we did have a lot of accomplishments. >> reporter: disturbed by tellis' behavior, reid decided to challenge him in the race for clark county public administrator. reid and her co-workers austined off a reporter who had a long history of exposing bad behavior, from corruption to mob murders, jeff gearman. >> so we decided that we would go public, we would try to talk to a journalist here in our community and see if somebody felt it was worthy of reporting. >> reporter: for months, gearman dug into the tip, writing a series of critical articles on tellis' alleged toxic behavior that sent the politician reeling. >> primarily, there were some things in social media where he the articles. at anger against - >> reporter: in one blog post, tellis taking aim at gearman's reporting, calling it gut-wrenching, writing, it was so ugly you almost had to believe it was true. i could understand why you