But it was something I wanted to try. I had never even been to City Hall; I had no idea what a mayor did. But I loved the city, and I needed a new challenge. I had accomplished everything possible as a defense attorney, and I was tired of a lot of it. So I appreciated my kids’ concern, but I was convinced, from the very beginning, that I would win. Again, it was one of those things where I thought I could “will” it to happen. You know, like the Chagra case. I shouldn’t have won that, or the Spilotro cases. No way could I keep him out of jail all those years—but I did.
In March of 1999, on the last day of the filing period, I announced that I was running for mayor. I had a press conference on a Friday in the lobby of my law office. I was holding a copy of the Constitution. I said that I wanted to lead the city into the next millennium, that I loved the city, and would be honored to work to improve it. That weekend, the Las Vegas Review Journal’s editorial headline blared, “Anybody but Oscar for Mayor.”
My platform was straightforward. I told people that the greatest thing I had going for me was my intellect. I said if you want someone who is smart and who will keep the interests of the city in the forefront and keep the city moving forward, I’m your man.
When I walked around the city as a candidate, I saw things differently and noticed things that I never saw before. Downtown was a mess, which became a key issue for me. Something had to be done, and that became part of my platform.
“The whole downtown area stinks,” I would say as I campaigned. “You’ve got a Neanderthal type of operation there. People have to realize that Las Vegas is the entertainment capital of the world. Unless we maintain and improve the downtown, it’s going to be like the core of an apple rotting from within.” I said we had to do something about it or we would lose the apple, and then maybe the whole barrel.
Part of my pitch was also to sell myself, who I was, and how I conducted myself. I’ve always had an ego, I’ve always been good at what I do, and I’ve always thought I was the best. I would joke and say, “I realize nobody’s right all the time . . . I just can’t remember when I’ve been wrong.”
“When people come to Las Vegas, they come to see glamour and glitz,” I said during my campaign speeches. “I’m the man for that. I’m not going to be one of those boring politicians. If that’s who you want, don’t vote for me.” I was bringing some of the same attitude to the campaign that I brought to the courtroom. And I think it worked.
Elections in Las Vegas are set up in two rounds. The first round is an open field; as many candidates as file are on the ballot. I think we had nearly a dozen candidates. Jay Bingham, a former county commissioner who was very prominent in the Mormon Church, was the favorite. Shortly after I filed, he dropped out. The story was that he had a heart problem, but the rumor was that he feared mob retaliation if he ran against me.
What can I tell you? People are funny. The ironic thing was many of my former clients and guys I had gotten to know while representing mobsters shied away from me after I announced that I was running. In fact, there were guys who stopped talking to me for the next twelve years. I couldn’t understand it; it was as though an iron door had been pulled shut. After I left office, one of them explained it to me.
“We didn’t want to cause you any embarrassment,” he said. “We knew you were taking heat, and we didn’t want to add to that fire. We had too much respect for you.”
Mob guys understood better than the public. They knew I was going to be fair and honest, the same as I had been when I represented them, and they had a tacit agreement amongst themselves not to put me in a sensitive spot.
With Bingham out of the race, Arnie Adamson, a sitting councilman, became the favorite. The odds makers made a “line” with me being a 17-to-1 underdog.
I went up to San Francisco shortly after I announced my candidacy to visit my daughter Cara, who had gone to Stanford and was working as a consultatnt in San Francisco. While I was there, the San Francisco Chronicle had an editorial urging Las Vegas voters to reject me, calling me “the barrister to butchers.” It was nuts! San Francisco was in the midst of a big financial crisis at the time, and they had a major problem with the homeless that was getting national attention. Yet its paper was worried about who was running for mayor in Las Vegas.
As you can imagine, I was the outlaw candidate, but I didn’t mind. I raised about $900,000 for my campaign. I got no help from the casinos—zero. I had no idea how to run a campaign, and even less of an idea how City Hall worked. But I was convinced I was going to win.
Carolyn was unbelievable. She was out there every day, knocking on doors. We went from neighborhood to neighborhood, talking to people. One day we were up in the Summerlin section, which was populated with wealthy, older, mostly retired residents. You couldn’t go up there in the morning because they were all out playing tennis or golf or walking their dog. And you couldn’t go too late at night because they’d be in bed.
I knocked on one door, and this nice elderly lady smiled and invited me in. She called out to her husband, “It’s the mob lawyer.”
I sat in her kitchen and she served me chocolate chip cookies and milk. I don’t think I’d had a glass of milk in forty years. Now that was campaigning.
We eventually put a staff together, and they came up with an absolutely awesome idea. They decided to “humanize” me in order to counteract the negative stuff some of my opponents were putting out. Nobody said it directly, but the buzz was that if Oscar got elected, the mob would take over City Hall.
Our campaign emphasized “the five best things in Oscar Goodman’s life.” It offered snapshot descriptions of my wife and our children, and said I never missed a soccer game. I didn’t do any formal polling, but every Saturday and Sunday I went down to the Costco store and talked to people. I kept on doing that after I was elected. You got a real sense of what people thought, and I knew I was going to do well.
In order to win in the first round, you have to get 50 percent of the vote, plus one. On election night, I was close. At one point I had 51 percent, but the final count gave me 49 percent, so there was a runoff. Arnie Adamson was the second highest vote-getter, so he and I squared off in the runoff.
Now there were going to be some debates. I knew I was good on my feet, but I also had a temper. What might work in court wasn’t necessarily good in a political debate. Adamson had started to run a negative campaign with ads sprinkled with allusions to what I supposedly represented—hypodermic needles, money bags, guns. I was livid. Carolyn knew that I wanted to strangle Adamson; that I wanted to put my hand down his throat and pull out his innards. She tried to calm me.
“Say something nice about him,” she said.
“Nice?” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “Say he has a nice wife.”
As the first debate was approaching, I got word that the Police Protective Association, the police union, was going to send someone in to bait me. They saw me as the anti-Christ; it was like I had 6-6-6 tattooed on my forehead.
The night before the debate, my son Ross, who was a captain in the Marines, called. He said he was just checking in and wanted to say “hi,” but I knew he was concerned. I told him about the debate and what was planned, and he came up with a strategy.
“You’ve got to use a pre-emptive strike,” he said.
I had no idea what he was talking about.
“Whadda ya mean?” I said.
“Come out of the box first. Take the initiative. Don’t let them raise the issues. You raise them before they can.”
This made a lot of sense. If it was good enough for the Marines, it was good enough for me. At the debate, one of the first people to ask a question was a former reporter who I had thought was a friend. He came up to the podium, and very smugly he asked me, “When’s the last time you were in City Hall?”
And then he started to walk away.
“Hey, wait a second, buddy,” I said. “Don’t you walk away. Come back here. I’ll answer your question.”
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sp; Then I delivered my pre-emptive strike.
“I’ve never been to City Hall, okay. The first time will be when I’m elected. And I know there have been questions about my drinking. Let me tell all of you, I drink in excess, sometimes a bottle of gin a night. And something else: I’m a degenerate gambler. If there’s a cockroach running around out there, I’ll bet on whether he goes right or left. I’ve represented bad guys, but the last time I checked, they were entitled to representation under our Constitution . . .”
I went on like that for about five minutes. The people in the audience loved it. And after that, there was nothing negative my opponent could say about me. I said it all first, and I took the sting out.
I won the election in what they called a landslide. I got sixty-four percent of the vote.
I got a call from President Clinton congratulating me on being elected to lead the fastest developing city in the country. Five minutes later I got a call from Manny Baker, the heroin kingpin, who also wanted to congratulate me. Bill Clinton and Manny Baker—that about summed it all up for me.
In the next two elections, I got over 80 percent of the vote. I spent twelve years in office, and it changed my life. It freed me, and I loved it.
When I was practicing law, every day, every hour, I was on guard. I had to be circumspect, and careful about what I said and to whom I said it. It got to the point where the only person I knew I could trust was my wife. After I heard myself on wiretaps, it got even worse. If you’ve never experienced that, you really can’t appreciate what it does to you. You never feel secure after that; it’s like a home invasion. You really do feel violated.
As mayor, I never worried about any of that. I talked to everyone. I rediscovered the value of social intercourse. I had press conferences every week and I let it all hang out. I’d stand there nude if I thought it was necessary. I was a great believer in open government, and that was the way I approached the job.
My perception of being mayor, of course, was not the reality. I had thoughts of Boss Tweed, Old Man Daley in Chicago, or Richardson Dilworth in Philadelphia. These were mayors who were in charge.
I soon discovered that I was just one member of a five-member (and eventually seven-member) city council. My vote counted for no more than any other council member. So I had to learn to count to four to operate effectively in the political world. But the biggest thing I had going for me was that I didn’t need the job.
Don’t misunderstand me—I loved the job. But I wasn’t concerned about the politics of being an elected official. I wasn’t worried about a political career. I ran for mayor because I wanted to do something for a city that I loved. That was the only reason I was there, and it made me more powerful. I was immune to lots of the petty nonsense that comes with any elected office. I said what I thought, and I did what needed to be done.
I never turned down a speaking engagement unless it conflicted with some other commitment that had already been scheduled. I was accessible twenty-four–seven. It was a part-time job that I worked at full-time.
Once a month we scheduled “coffee with the mayor,” moving around the different wards of the city. People would be lined up outside the shops. They’d come with ideas and suggestions. I’d have staff people with me, and we’d take notes. We listened to everyone and heard about everything, from local zoning issues to the legalization of medical marijuana. It was a great way to find out what was going on in my city. You can’t hole up in an office and expect to be a leader. If you’re going to represent the people, you’ve got to get out and talk to the people.
That’s what government is about. It’s not about getting re-elected; it’s about serving the common good.
As time went on, we also started a monthly “martinis with the mayor,” which were meetings in local bars. They were my favorites. People usually left those sessions feeling very good about themselves.
It was during one of those martini nights that the thought occurred to me that bartenders and waitresses were great ambassadors for the city. They were the ones who were meeting tourists and visitors every day. So we started a monthly program where we would honor one of them in recognition for the way they treated people. I’d give them a key to the city during a presentation ceremony. It was a great way to show how we appreciated people who, day in and day out, made Las Vegas what it was. I also realized that I enjoyed making people happy.
To me, the most important part of being mayor was being a leader. As mayor, your goal should be to make the city a better place, a place where people enjoy their lives and are able to thrive. You’re a cheerleader as much as anything, and you set the tone.
Becoming mayor was one of the best things that ever happened to me.
I started to dream again, and I had all these ideas about making the city a better place. I wasn’t sure how I was going to accomplish it all, but I knew what I wanted to get done, and that I was going to work hard to get it.
It was a wonderful feeling. And in the morning, when I woke up, I liked who I saw in the mirror.
CHAPTER 12
BITTEN BY THE BUG
When I was thinking about running for mayor, I was invited by Steve Wynn to fly to Biloxi, Mississippi, for the opening of his new casino, the Beau Rivage. Wynn’s an interesting guy. He’s accomplished a lot, but like so many others, he’s mostly interested in what works for him. I guess in that sense, he’s no different than any businessman.
We flew down on a private jet. There was a group of wealthy Las Vegas residents on the plane, and I saw it as a chance to float my ideas. I had a captive audience, and I took advantage of the opportunity. I went up and down the aisle seeing if these people would support me, and I got really good feedback.
Wynn especially liked my ideas for downtown. He had sold his downtown property, the Golden Nugget, when he began to develop beautiful sites on the Las Vegas strip, including the Mirage, Treasure Island, and the Bellagio. But he told me that he would be supportive of me if I were elected mayor. Those were the kinds of commitments I was looking for. I knew I needed major support if I was going to do anything about turning the inner city area around.
He told me if I were elected, he would help me redevelop the urban core. Having him committed was huge. Frank Luntz, the great pollster, was retained by Wynn to ascertain what the community was lacking and whether the taxpaying citizens would be supportive. He determined that the two things Las Vegas needed were a first-class performing arts center and an arena. Wynn said he would be a moving force behind those projects.
As soon as I got elected, Wynn went south on me. He said he wanted nothing to do with downtown. When I confronted him, he told me, “Your downtown is never going to come back, and I’m not going to build down there.”
The same thing happened with Michael Gaughan, whose father Jackie had been a founder of some of the great downtown “joints” like the Union Plaza, the El Cortez, and the Las Vegas Club. Michael was a great operator. When I approached him for a contribution, he was very generous, but he said downtown was dead. He wanted no part of it because it was never going to be successful. Instead he went out, way south of the Las Vegas strip. He also bet me that I wouldn’t be elected. He still owes me a dinner, thirteen years later.
It was a rude awakening for me, but it made me even more determined. As a lawyer I had traveled all over the country. I had seen cities like Newark, Philadelphia, and San Diego attempting to fight urban blight.
I’ve seen places in those cities and elsewhere that looked like war zones. We had the same thing downtown: boarded-up storefronts, empty buildings, vacant lots covered with trash. I knew I had to do something about it. San Diego created the Gas Lamp District in what was once one of the worst sections of town, and I wanted to use that as a model.
I remember being in San Diego before the redevelopment. A friend had a law office in the area, and when I went there, there were tiny bugs everywhere. They had been attracted by the urine. At night, the street people used his doorway as a bathroom. There we
re hookers all over the place chasing the sailors. These were hookers, not call girls. There were drug dealers and drug users, filthy dirty strung-out people, holding out their hand for change. It wasn’t the image of a vibrant city, by any means.
Today, it’s a different place. They’ve built a brand-new convention center and a baseball stadium. I said to myself, this is what has to happen in Las Vegas. I wasn’t inventing the wheel; I didn’t have some revolutionary idea. I just knew that we had to make this happen.
The battle was fought on so many different levels. I learned a lot about urban planning and redevelopment, but what served me best was common sense and not being afraid to say what I thought. That’s the way I approached the job. I’ve said this before, but it’s worth repeating. I was a better mayor because I had no idea what the job was supposed to be. I didn’t have preconceived ideas about how the office functioned; I just felt that my job was to lead the city and to hopefully make it better. That’s what Doug Selby, who became city manager shortly after I took office, told me. A mayor, he said, was supposed to be the face of the city—its cheerleader—and his job was to leave the city a better place than when he found it.
I also believed that people had to do what I told them to do. And while that wasn’t the case, it didn’t stop me from trying. Part of my attitude was political naiveté, and part of it was ego. I was never in doubt, and I know that bothered some people. It still does. But it’s who I am.
And let me clear something up right now. There is absolutely no truth to the rumor that every morning Carolyn gets up, comes around to my side of the bed, and begins applauding in order to get me going. I’m self-motivated. Even without her, I hear the applause in my head.
I had played myself in the movie Casino while I was still actively practicing law. As I mentioned earlier, the film was written by Nicholas Pileggi, directed by Martin Scorsese, and starred Robert DeNiro, Joe Pesci, and Sharon Stone. They played characters based on people I had represented: Lefty Rosenthal, Tony Spilotro, and Geri Rosenthal.
Being Oscar: From Mob Lawyer to Mayor of Las Vegas Page 18