Las Vegas Mayor Flush With City Pride

If this city gambled four years ago in electing former mob lawyer Oscar Goodman as mayor, residents seem ready now to coronate him.

“They love me!” he says. “It’s a narcotic. I don’t need this job. I want it!”

And they seem to want him. No one of citywide stature is opposing his reelection bid, and Goodman is expected to easily dismiss five little-known candidates in Tuesday’s primary election. The question is not whether he’ll get more than 50% of the votes and avoid the June runoff, but whether he will win by a landslide of 80% or more.

“He’s such a great character,” said Las Vegas native Dianna Hartwell, 42, a housewife. “His image and the city’s go together perfectly.”

But critics say Goodman’s bluster as a wise-cracking and charismatic mayor masks his inability to move the city forward in tangible ways.

“His greatest asset by far is his enthusiasm in selling Las Vegas,” said Jon Ralston, a local political columnist. “He can sell this town like nobody else. His effervescence is unmatched.

“But his downside is there’s nothing beyond that. He’s a huckster who’s a mob lawyer from the past, when this town should be looking to the future.”

In his inaugural run for public office four years ago, Goodman played down his role in representing, among others, Tony “The Ant” Spilotro, who ran the Chicago mob’s operations in Las Vegas. (Spilotro was found dead in an Indiana cornfield in 1986.)

Instead, he sold himself to voters as a family man and political outsider who was so rich he couldn’t be corrupted.

Since then, he has altered how the mayor’s job is traditionally conducted.

Goodman, 63, regularly meets with constituents, not at community halls but at bar and tavern gatherings called “Martinis with the Mayor.”

When county officials told topless and nude dancers to clean up their acts, Goodman invited them to perform within city limits.

His favorite phrase is, “I’m the happiest mayor in the world,” and his favorite word is “whack,” the kind of thing that got his underworld clients in trouble.

In February, Goodman invited to his daughter’s engagement party Joseph Cusumano, a convicted felon who was associated with organized crime. Cusumano is banned from Nevada casinos. Goodman responded to criticism from casino industry executives and others by saying, “What I do in my home is nobody’s business.”

He accepts campaign contributions from the owners of a notorious topless club in town, one that was raided several weeks ago by federal and local law enforcement agents looking for possible connections to organized crime and drug trafficking. At least, Goodman says, they wrote a check. “My old clients used to pay me with bags of cash.”

Despite widespread opposition to Internet gambling, Goodman proposed last year that the city seal be used to endorse an offshore Internet casino company, and then share in gambling profits. The idea died.

He has proposed shipping some homeless to an old, empty prison, and then he endorsed an upscale gin, earmarking some of his promotional fee to a homeless assistance fund.

He wants to open a “mob museum” as a tourist attraction that would hark back to the city’s more colorful days.

“I’ve spanned this city from the old mob days to the new family Vegas,” Goodman said. “I prefer selling our history. It’s glitzy, glamorous and electric. When people come to Vegas, they want to find Bugsy Siegel under a rock, not Mickey Mouse.”

At the same time, Goodman is trying to put a more conventional face on downtown Las Vegas, which has languished over the years as the nearby Strip -- which falls outside the city limits -- has flourished.

He led the city’s efforts in acquiring, through a series of land trades, a 61-acre downtown parcel that he wants developed as a medical research center. It would specialize in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, cancer and pain, he said, which would benefit a community with a growing population of retirees.

In time, he says, people will come because Las Vegas offers casinos and cures.

He also wants to develop the site with a cultural arts complex, a sports stadium and high-rise urban dwellings to bring big-city diversity to an otherwise singularly focused town.

For now, all he can boast about is construction of a factory outlet center and plans for a wholesale furniture mart.

Critics say Goodman has been long on enthusiasm and short on execution in developing the centerpiece parcel. That the downtown parcel remains empty is evidence, columnist Ralston said, that the mayor is not as effective as he believes.

Goodman brushes off the criticism, saying it would be easy to fill the parcel with hodgepodge development, and that he’s holding out for something more dramatic. Others are more forgiving of Goodman, whose only technical power comes with his single vote on the seven-member City Council.

“Downtown redevelopment is beyond his immediate control,” said Michael Green, a political historian with the Community College of Southern Nevada and a local columnist. “But Oscar has succeeded in giving Las Vegans the sense that this can and will become a better place. That goes to his force as a personality more than his role as mayor.”

Goodman said his years as a lawyer prepared him well for the mayor’s job. “I wasn’t bad in persuading 12 people,” he said.

But there have been adjustments from the courthouse to City Hall.

“As a lawyer, I did everything myself. I did my own research, I interviewed my own witnesses, I tried my own cases,” he said. “The toughest thing I’ve had to learn here is that I can no longer do everything alone. I was naive. I couldn’t just will things to happen. I have to use city staff.”

Residents in this city of 521,000 seem more swept up in Goodman’s charisma than keeping score of his accomplishments. Marv Seligman, 65, who moved from Manhattan Beach two years ago, calls Goodman “just terrific. He’s genuine. I’ve only met him once, but I consider him a friend.”

Goodman receives that kind of reception wherever he goes. Visiting a casino last week, cocktail waitresses asked to be photographed with him.

“I love that,” he said. “This is the first time in my professional life that I’m able to embrace the people I care for. As a defense attorney, I was very insular, very protective of myself and my wife. I didn’t let myself get close to anybody. We went out to dinner alone, and I wouldn’t talk to anybody for fear that what I said could be misconstrued.

“But when I became mayor, I was finally able to embrace people. That was very freeing, very satisfying. My wife jokes about it, but when I wake up in the morning, she applauds me. And during the day, people want to shake my hand. I thrive on adulation.”