Las Vegas Mayor Earns Respect in Spite of Himself

The mayor of Las Vegas, nearing the end of a typical 15-hour day, is sipping a martini with his wife, talking about the horse he bet on and the tractor-trailer he drove down the Strip.

Usually, Oscar Goodman doesn’t call it a day until he’s clashed with someone, but sometimes even the self-described world’s happiest mayor gets lucky in Vegas.

“It’s wonderful,” he says of being the mayor of the nation’s fastest-growing city. “You get up in the morning, you’re out and about, you’re making the city a better place. It’s the perfect life.”

He is a mix of the old and the new Las Vegas, a reminder of the city’s shady past and the biggest cheerleader for its future.

He gambles. He drinks. He says the wrong things. Yet he’s popular. Really popular.

“I represent the city of Las Vegas the way it should be,” Goodman says. “It’s not a mundane, run-of-the-mill place. I feel I am the people’s mayor.”

It’s been almost three years since Goodman came out of nowhere to run a populist campaign that culminated in a landslide victory over a veteran city councilman. It was his first try at public office. Before 1999, he was a high-profile criminal defense attorney whose mob clients included Meyer Lansky and Anthony “Tony the Ant” Spilotro, who once reputedly placed a rival’s head in a vise and squeezed his eyeballs out.

Goodman grew bored with his other cases after Spilotro was killed in 1986. He was looking for a change. When he suggested running for mayor, even his four kids were surprised. They told their father he had more baggage than airport skycaps.

Valet car attendants and taxi drivers know his name. So do casino pit bosses and gamblers. “He’s not afraid to speak his mind,” says limousine driver Ken Herrera, who greets Goodman outside a casino. “It’s what we need.”

On this day, a casino valet shakes the mayor’s hand, lifts his shirt to show his bullet wounds and talks about an uncle “on vacation” in Chicago.

“Prison?” the mayor asks.

The worker nods. “I know some of the people you know,” he says.

Goodman, 62, arrives at Bally’s hotel-casino on the Strip to welcome the United Auto Workers. The Strip is actually outside the city, but Goodman is a popular choice for convention speeches and promotions.

“What am I speaking about?” he asks his spokesman, Erik Pappa.

Good question, since Goodman, 62, doesn’t write speeches, except for the annual state-of-the-city address. Sometimes his off-the-cuff approach results in bold remarks that make local headlines. Other times, he tells funny stories and, as with the UAW, gives a welcome to the city.

Speech done, he’s leaving the casino when he remembers he wants to bet on a horse.

He plops down $100 on Beefeater Baby, the favorite to win at Santa Anita this day. Beefeater is a favorite brand of gin, and the mayor likes his martinis--straight up, ice on the side. (“I drink more gin than any human being,” he says.)

The Beefeater company even asked the mayor to be a spokesman for the gin, but Goodman says he and the company couldn’t agree on a price, and he’s now considering touting another brand. Any money he receives will go into the city’s general fund, he says.

Once the mouthpiece of the mob, it’s often his mouth that gets him into trouble. He says what he wants, no matter the audience.

He called U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham “that piece of garbage” for recommending nearby Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste dump.

When someone spilled a white powdery substance next to his Mercedes in the city hall parking garage, Goodman offered to go after the person with a baseball bat.

Homeless advocates accused him of being insensitive after he suggested rounding them up and busing them to an abandoned prison 30 miles away.

“There is a fine line in politics in being a maverick and being a buffoon,” says Nevada political analyst Jon Ralston. “I think he’s right on that line or is about to cross over it.

“He listens to nobody. He has a titanic ego.”

But Goodman insists he says what people are scared to say.

Polls consistently show an approval rating of 75% to 80%.

“Even when there have been things his critics have tried to take advantage of, it doesn’t really affect his numbers that much,” says Marvin Longabaugh, president of Magellan Research, a Las Vegas public opinion polling company.

“His charisma trumps just about anything else he does.”

In Las Vegas, the mayor has the same power as a council member and is the ceremonial head of government, making $52,633 a year.

But try telling Goodman he is a glorified councilman.

His biggest achievement came in 2000 when the city acquired a 61-acre parcel of downtown land. His dream is to establish an academic medical center there in a downtown he envisions as a trendy attraction of bars, restaurants, shops and a museum.

For that to happen, Goodman needs Neonopolis, a downtown entertainment mall of movie theaters, restaurants and a bowling alley, to succeed. The project was already in the works before Goodman took office, but when it opens in May, its popularity will determine if it can anchor redevelopment.

By fall, a downtown pedestrian plaza will have a waterfall and reflecting pond that Goodman has nicknamed “Oscar’s River.” Construction is expected to begin soon on a proposed downtown arena that will host a minor-league hockey team.

The mayor has tried to lure a major-league sports team to the city, but says Las Vegas lost out because the gambling industry didn’t support the idea. “They don’t want to let their customers out of their smoke-filled casinos,” he says.

Goodman is critical of the casinos because they haven’t supported his pet projects, says Bill Bible, president of the Nevada Resort Assn., which represents many hotel-casinos.

“I’m of the belief that most people in the industry don’t really take him seriously,” he says. “Sometimes the most popular people don’t accomplish anything.”

There was talk of a run for governor, but Goodman, a Democrat, doesn’t want to give up being mayor. He intends to seek another term next year.

“I don’t know whether I’m a visionary, but I am a person with dreams,” he says.

And clearly a man enamored of the city that has brought him fame for a second time.

Back on the Strip, the mayor is invited to drive a tractor-trailer hauling food donated by the Farm Bureau to the Ronald McDonald house for sick children’s families.

The farmers cheer as he tells a story about an adopted pig. Then he heads to the tractor-trailer and quips: “All I’m doing is praying to God that the big-roller doesn’t hit the high-roller.”

Then it’s off to another casino for a radio interview.

By 9 p.m. and after two more speeches, the mayor is dining with Carolyn, his wife of almost 40 years, at an Italian restaurant.

It’s been 15 hours, five public appearances and four interviews since he left his home, and there’s not a hint that he’s tired. He doesn’t even call this a busy day.

The horse he bet on won. Goodman’s take was $120. Carolyn rolls her eyes.

On their drive home, she remarks about an obnoxious store sign.

“I’ll have to do something about that,” the mayor says with a believable grin.