Las Vegas Winner Barely Has Time to Bet

Oscar Goodman had a busy first day as mayor-elect of Las Vegas. There were council members to meet, interviews to conduct.

And, of course, a basketball game to bet on. This is a gambling town after all.

“I haven’t even had time to decide whether I like the Knicks or the Pacers,” Goodman said Wednesday.

The morning after completing his transformation from mob lawyer to mayor-elect in a landslide, Goodman was operating at his usual hectic pace, setting the tone for a four-year term that promises to be anything but boring.

He was on the phone with the city manager to make plans for taking over the city on June 28, while making sure he set aside time to appear on some national cable news programs to promote Las Vegas.

“I’m touting the virtues of the greatest city in the world,” Goodman said. “I want everyone to know what a great city this is.”

After already making converts of Las Vegas voters, Goodman wasted no time in focusing on getting support from the city officials and bureaucrats he will need to carry out his plans to fix the city’s infrastructure and attract cutting-edge companies to town.

At least one city councilman liked what he saw.

“I don’t think he’ll miss a beat,” Councilman Larry Brown said. “The learning curve will be instantaneous.”

Goodman, whose populist campaign took him from a political nobody to mayor-elect in just four months, plans to put aside his lucrative law practice to devote his full-time attention to the post.

He vowed to be both a visionary mayor who builds consensus on a council that will soon be expanded from five to seven members, and one who will readily tackle the mundane chores of day-to-day city life.

He said he will use the same skills in his new job that he used in persuading juries to let off such clients as Tony “the Ant” Spilotro and Meyer Lansky.

Calculating the size of a majority on the new City Council, Goodman said, “All I have to do now is try to convince four people to see it my way instead of 12. It should only take one-third of the effort.”

He won office partly on a pledge to make developers pay more to help solve traffic and pollution problems. But on Wednesday he was already on to other issues, like downtown redevelopment and attracting high-tech companies to the city.