Being Oscar: From Mob Lawyer to Mayor of Las Vegas

by Oscar Goodman

  I said no, I wasn’t going to do it. But I thought about what she said, and I decided I probably should. About that time we got a call from the White House.

  “Mayor, we expect you to be at the airport,” this official said.

  I didn’t like his attitude.

  “I’m not coming,” I said.

  “What’s the problem?” he asked.

  “The president hurt my city, and he hasn’t done anything to rectify it.”

  He asked for more details, and I told him. He said someone would get back to me. On Memorial Day, I went to the cemetery where there’s the annual commemoration for those who made the ultimate sacrifice for our country. By 11:30 that morning, I was home sitting in the backyard relaxing. I had made myself a big martini, and I was planning to just enjoy a quiet afternoon. I was sitting in my favorite chair, looking at my koi fish and the fountain, feeling no pain. And the phone rang.

  I rushed back in the house and picked it up on the third ring.

  It was Rahm Emanuel, the president’s chief of staff, although he introduced himself as “Congressman Emanuel.”

  It’s amazing how fast you can sober up.

  “I heard you have a problem with the president,” he said.

  “You bet I do,” I said. “He was completely out of line and he hurt our community.”

  “What will it take for you to meet him at the airport?”

  I said I wanted an apology, that I wanted him to say something like, “Las Vegas is a great place to do business and have fun.” He said he could take care of that with the speechwriters. I took him at his word and when the president arrived, I was there at the airport to greet him, to welcome him to Las Vegas.

  The first thing he said to me was, “I hear you’re telling everyone I caused you to lose sixty percent of your business. What would happen if I said it’s a great place to visit?”

  “I’d tell everybody you got us back eighty percent of our business,” I said. “I’ve got no problem with that.”

  There was a picture in the paper the next day of him and me talking at the airport. We don’t really look like friends. The next day when he gave his speech to Nevadans, the only thing he said was, “It’s nice to be in Las Vegas.”

  That was it. From where I stood, that wasn’t a retraction. He didn’t do what he or his chief of staff said he would do to right the wrong. I’m not someone who believes in letting bygones be bygones. I was angry, and I wasn’t going to forget.

  It’s funny. These guys are politicians. They give their word, and they don’t think they have to keep it. I represented people who the government said were vicious, terrible individuals; Mafia bosses, killers, gangsters. When they gave me their word, I could take it to the bank.

  Who’s more honorable?

  But that’s not the end of the story. About a year later, he did it again. He was speaking at some town meeting in New Hampshire. The topic was government spending and the tight economy. And here’s part of what he said:

  “Responsible families don’t do their budgets the way the federal government does, right? When times are tough, you tighten your belts. You don’t go buying a boat when you can barely pay your mortgage. You don’t blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you’re trying to save for college. You prioritize. You make tough choices. It’s time your government did the same.”

  I’ve got no problem with the point he made. Government has to be more responsible about the way it spends money. But why Vegas again? He had to throw us under the bus a second time.

  I was livid. So were a lot of others. Harry Reid, one of our senators, demanded an apology, and got one of sorts. I’ve had my moments with Reid, especially when he was part of the Gaming Commission and putting my clients in the Black Book. But this time he did the right thing. He put out a statement chastising the president and warning him to “lay off Las Vegas and stop making it the poster child for where people shouldn’t be spending their money.”

  The president responded to him, maybe because he was a senator, saying that his comments were not meant to be “anything negative about Las Vegas,” adding that “there is no place better to have fun than Vegas, one of our country’s great destinations.”

  To me it sounded like the part of the speech he forgot to give a year earlier. Those were the kind of lines I thought Rahm Emanuel was going to get a speechwriter to give Obama. But I was past the point of being placated. I was interviewed and I let it all come out. Today you can still find the video online.

  “He has a real psychological hang-up about the entertainment capital of the world,” I said. “An apology won’t be acceptable this time. I don’t know where his vendetta comes from, but we’re not going to let him make his bones by lambasting Las Vegas.

  “He didn’t learn his lesson the first time, but when he hurt our economy by his ill-conceived rhetoric, we didn’t think it would happen again. But now that it has, I want to assure you, when he comes back, I’ll do everything I can to give him the boot back to Washington and visit his failures back there.

  “I gotta tell you this, and everybody says I shouldn’t say it, but I gotta tell you the way it is. This president is a real slow learner.”

  And the next time the president came to Las Vegas, I was not at the airport to greet him.

  Those comments made me a hero in town with most people, but apparently they struck a nerve with some African-Americans. A group of black clergymen demanded I apologize. They said “giving the boot” had some kind of racial connotation. I said I wasn’t going to apologize because I hadn’t said or done anything wrong.

  Louis Farrakhan gave a speech at Howard University where he referred to me as the “little Jewish mayor” and said I had snubbed the president because he was black. Farrakhan is a racist pig. I despise everything he stands for. What I said had nothing to do with race. I didn’t care if the president was black, white, green, or had polka dots. Twice he said things that hurt my city, and I wasn’t going to keep my mouth shut about it.

  I don’t know of any other mayor who stood up to a president like that. He really soured me on politics and politicians, the way he handled the whole exchange. It’s so easy to just say, “I’m sorry. I made a mistake.”

  What’s so hard about that? That’s the problem with politicians. Consider Sanford from South Carolina and the woman in Argentina. Clinton and his “I did not have sex with that woman.” Tell the truth and admit you made a mistake. The public is understanding—at least that’s been my experience.

  The racism charge was just something drummed up by people who use it at every turn to call attention to themselves. It was an economic issue, not a racial issue. That’s another one of the problems we have in this country. You may disagree with what I say, but don’t try to make what I say something that it isn’t. You want to debate me on an issue, fine. Let’s go. I don’t care what color you are.

  I think about that Rodney King question, “Can’t we all just get along?”

  Maybe we can’t. I look at what’s going on in Washington today, and I’m disgusted. One of the reasons I decided not to run for the U.S. Senate was the thought of trying to deal with that. I’ve talked to a lot of senators. They say things have changed, and not for the better.

  There’s no discourse, no compromise, no debate. It’s all personal now, and they really don’t like one another. That’s the situation we have, and it’s remarkable that they function at all.

  As an elected official, I always took my position on any issue seriously. That’s what I was elected to do. But once in awhile, you have to take a step back, look around, and realize what life is all about. And hopefully, when you do that, you stop taking yourself too seriously.

  I have licensed my persona for a restaurant in Las Vegas now, “Oscar’s Beef, Booze, and Broads,” and during last year’s presidential campaign we had two special drinks on the menu. We had the “No Bama” in honor of President Obama. It was a complicated mixed drink: two ounces of Jefferson’s 10-year-old straight
rye whiskey, one and a half ounces of Canton ginger liqueur, a half ounce of Sombra, three-fourths of an ounce of lemon juice, and three-fourths of an ounce of simple syrup.

  And then we had the “Romney” for Mitt Romney: tap water over ice.

  After the election we discontinued the presidential drinks and started to feature “The Oscar”—four and a quarter ounces of Bombay Sapphire Gin, one jalapeno pepper, and a splash of olive juice over ice.

  It’s all about choices . . . and not taking yourself too seriously.

  CHAPTER 15

  FUN IN THE PLAYBOY SUITE

  One of the things I enjoyed about being mayor was having a platform to talk about and advocate for the things I thought were important. My battles over the homeless issue were one example. I’m proud of what we accomplished, and I think we’ve begun to address that problem in a sensible and honest way. I said what I thought, and I backed it up with action.

  I took the same approach with another type of urban blight—graffiti. I don’t see it as art; I don’t see any Picassos out there. And I especially don’t see any justification in defacing public property and calling it self-expression.

  We have one of the ugliest highway systems in the country in Las Vegas. There are these concrete ribbons everywhere, a spaghetti bowl of intersections and overlapping roadways devoid of any touch of humanity. There was no landscaping and few public areas. After I was elected, I wanted to change that. We started a highway beautification project, and one of the things I was most proud of was a sculpture of a giant desert tortoise that was the centerpiece for one of the landscaping projects.

  A couple of days after the tortoise was unveiled, I got a call from someone down at the highway maintenance office.

  “You’re not going to like this,” he said. “Someone graffitied your tortoise.”

  I was livid, and I didn’t try to hide that fact. I went on television and I said, “If we catch the person who marred my tortoise, I’m advocating that we chop his thumb off. And I think we should do it on TV.”

  Another media frenzy ensued, worse in some ways than the dispute over the homeless. Now I wasn’t just the meanest mayor in America; I was a despot and a dictator who was advocating the maiming of graffiti artists, although I hesitate to use the word “artist” in describing these vandals.

  An Associated Press article moved over the wires and, I assume, throughout the world. I was described as suggesting that graffiti artists have their “thumbs cut off on television.” It also made reference to my comment about how the French used to have public beheadings of people who committed heinous crimes and to how I had gone on about public whippings and canings, suggesting that I thought those also should be brought back as punishments.

  I had said a lot of that, but I was merely trying to make a point. Public floggings should only be permissible, I said, after someone had had a fair trial.

  Sometimes I wonder if the American public is paying attention, or if the media is just trying to stir the pot. Satire used to be an accepted device to make a point, state a position, generate discussion. When Jonathan Swift wrote that the Irish could deal with the famine by eating their children, he wasn’t advocating cannibalism. When he wrote that “a young, healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted baked or boiled,” he wasn’t providing a recipe. He was making a point.

  There were times when I felt like screaming. I wasn’t proposing that we cut off anyone’s thumb. But I was trying to call attention to the tremendous cost, both in cleaning up the mess and in terms of a community’s identity that graffiti creates.

  That was one point I wanted to make. This so-called “art” costs taxpayers money and defaces the city. Another point was that the law should be a deterrent. Cutting off a thumb or resorting to caning were both hyperbolic expressions meant to underscore problems that need to be addressed. I also suggested that anyone convicted of spraying graffiti on public property should be put in a stockade that I wanted to have built on Fremont Street. I said that the offender could be put in the dock, and the public could come by and throw paint at him or her. A public embarrassment for the offender? Perhaps, but apt punishment for the offense.

  They eventually caught the kid who sprayed graffiti on my tortoise, and part of his punishment was a requirement that he had to come to my office and apologize. I had been given a gift during one of my trips, a machete. I put it on my desk and when the kid walked in, that was the first thing he saw. He stammered and couldn’t stop staring at the machete. I let him ponder the situation for a few seconds before I asked him if he had anything to say.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry . . . I’ll . . . I’ll never do it again.”

  I wasn’t going to forgive him, so I just told him he could go. But from the look on his face, I believed him when he said he wouldn’t do it again.

  The bottom line, though, is that in the aftermath of the “cut off their thumbs” controversy, the city started an anti-graffiti campaign aimed at making the public aware of the problems and the costs. And the police set up a squad that began to focus on graffiti “artists” and vandalism.

  Like the homeless situation, there is no simple solution. But to ignore it or to somehow justify it as self-expression is ridiculous. You want to express yourself with spray paint? Do it on a canvas. Or ask your parents if they’ll let you “tag” the walls of the home they own. See how that works. But know this: if you spray paint public property, there will be a price to be paid.

  The media firestorm over my position on graffiti was, in the end, a benefit. It helped focus attention on the problem. And while some pundits may not have appreciated the satirical nature of what I was saying, at least they got my words right.

  That wasn’t always the case.

  I was on a radio show and the issue of prostitution came up. I stated my position, but I said that as mayor, I would be bound by the wishes of the public, and that it was an issue the electorate and elected officials would have to decide.

  The headline that followed was

  GOODMAN WANTS TO LEGALIZE PROSTITUTION FOR LAS VEGAS

  That’s not what I said, but it didn’t matter; it made for a great headline. I got into a similar dispute with Bob Herbert, a columnist for the New York Times.

  He came into town to write about women being abused and the rampant prostitution in the city. I think he had the story written before he got here; it was going to be a hit piece filled with negativity. But he called up and asked if he could speak with me. I said sure. I’ve never been shy and this was, after all, the New York Times.

  I told him that the question of legalizing prostitution was an issue worth discussing. I said there were two sides to every story, and I recognized that there were those who believed all prostitution debased women, and there were those who opposed it on religious or moral grounds. I understand that, I said. But I also said that smart people shouldn’t be afraid to have a discussion. I wasn’t advocating it, but I said I could see a time when a red light district might be worth having downtown, and that it could be a great boost to the economy.

  The column he wrote made me sound like a misogynist. He either didn’t understand the points I was making, or had simply decided that what I said didn’t fit with the piece he wanted to write.

  So much for the “paper of record.”

  I don’t want to come across as someone who was a total political novice when I took office. True, I had never been elected to anything, but I had a pretty good idea of how the game was played, even though I had never set foot in the mayor’s office at City Hall.

  One of the first things I did was hire a guy named Bill Cassidy as a special assistant. I figured it would create the right “atmosphere” I needed to deal with the city council and the other politicos who were waiting for me to fail.

  I had met Cassidy when I was defending a client in a drug case in Oklahoma. He was an investigator for the lawyer who represented my client’s
brother. To describe Cassidy as a “character” doesn’t even begin to tell the story. He was slim, mustachioed, always wore sunglasses, and walked with a slouch reminiscent of Groucho Marx. I don’t think City Hall had ever seen the likes of him. He wore a Colombo-type trench coat and a Fedora, even in the Las Vegas heat. And I was pretty sure, as were most of the other people he came in contact with, that he was carrying.

  When I saw a problem coming with one of the councilmen, I sent Cassidy down the hall. The problem tended to go away.

  Everyone was cautious around Cassidy. Many were clearly afraid of him. I knew him to be a very bright guy and figured his presence would help ease my way into the arena that was Las Vegas government and politics. His resume was unbelievable. He had handled security for the Dalai Lama, and for Imelda Marcos and her husband, the president of the Philippines. He had been involved in covert ops for the CIA, and had been in Laos to help recover the remains of U.S. pilots whose planes had gone down there during the Vietnamese War. The Laotians were selling body parts as souvenirs, a practice he helped put an end to. He spoke Vietnamese and Tibetan, neither of which meant much in City Hall. But his mere presence gave me a leg up. Later he had some personal problems and I had to let him go, but he was definitely an asset when I started out in office. I guess I was just used to being around guys who gave off an aura and who had an attitude. But that never changed the way I went about my business.

  My approach was always to tell the truth. From time to time, it’s gotten me in trouble, but I still think it’s the best policy. I was invited to speak to a fourth grade class at an elementary school as part of a literacy program, and I read a book to the children. It was a funny story about the three pigs and the wolf, told from the wolf’s perspective. I enjoyed it, and afterward I took some questions from the students.

  One boy raised his hand right away.

  “If you could only have one thing, what would you want with you on a desert island in the middle of the ocean?”

  I didn’t hesitate.