Being Oscar (35 page)

We made fake casino chips with my caricature on them inscribed with the words “Happiest Mayor of the Greatest City in the World.” I would give those out wherever I went. During my three terms in office, I think there were more than twenty bobblehead dolls made in my likeness. There was the pinstriped suit and baseball bat. Another was a pinstriped suit and a martini. You can also see me in tennis togs and in a hula skirt, among other things.

All the attention was remarkable, and I loved it.

Gin and martinis are important to me; I don’t try to hide that. And a few years after I became mayor, I was able to parlay it into a windfall. I was asked to be the spokesperson/pitchman for Bombay Sapphire gin. My friends Larry Ruvo and Michael Severino set it up, and I jumped at the chance.

The deal included a payment of $100,000. I donated half to the Meadows School that Carolyn had founded, and the other half I gave to a program set up to combat alcoholism among the homeless. I’m still out there pitching for Bombay, although I haven’t brought the topic up with any other fourth graders recently.

But I do try to mention gin or a martini in any adult conversation I’m having. It’s my way of being a good representative for Bombay Sapphire. I did just that while I was in Washington, D.C., at a U.S. Conference of Mayors’ gathering, and was asked to go on a radio talk show with Mayor Pat McCrory of Charlotte, North Carolina, who is now the governor.

The topic of the conference was a plan by the federal government to designate Yucca Mountain, which was located about ninety miles from Las Vegas, as a nuclear waste site. I opposed the plan, and eventually fought it and won. Even when I stopped actively practicing criminal law, it seemed like I was still battling the federal government at every turn. They wanted to dump nuclear waste at the site and they offered no safety guarantees—at least none that satisfied me. They also planned to transport this stuff virtually through the city of Las Vegas. I said I would lay down on the railroad tracks or the highway to block any train or truck that was moving nuclear waste through our city. It was another example of the feds trying to do whatever they wanted to whomever they wanted. This time it wasn’t a criminal matter, although you could argue, and I certainly did, that what they planned was criminal, not to mention potentially life-threatening and environmentally devastating.

So we were on the radio talking about that topic, but somehow the conversation drifted. I had been on the Atkins diet at the time, and I started to rave about how effective it was. I ended by saying, “It’s the only diet I’ve ever been on that allows me to drink a quart of gin a night.”

The next day, when I got back to Las Vegas, there was a huge basket stuffed with Atkins food products and diet books, and a note from Dr. Atkins thanking me for the nice things I had said about his no-carb diet. I got on the phone and called the doctor to thank him in return for the basket of goodies. We talked for awhile and then he said, “Where in the world did you get the idea that you could drink a bottle of gin a night?”

I told him I had read that in the back of his book. “It says that gin has just a trace of carbs,” I told him, quoting from his own work.

He laughed and said the next edition would have an asterisk next to that with an Oscar Goodman disclaimer.

Those were just some of the perks that came with being mayor. In fact, “perks” is probably not the right word. These were really opportunities, rather than the gratuities I used to get as a criminal defense attorney. But as mayor, I was happy to take advantage of them.

I also tried to establish my own sense of Las Vegas history.

Steve Sebelius, a Las Vegas political pundit, accused me of creating the founding date of the City of Las Vegas on May 15, 1905 so I could be assured that the city centennial would take place while I was in office. He insisted the real date was in 1911 when the city was officially incorporated. I told him to go jump in the lake, and we celebrated the centennial in 2005.

Another opportunity—and this was the greatest one yet—was a chance to do a photo shoot for
Playboy
. I’m not much of a photographer, but I jumped at the chance when they asked me to be the first elected official to work as a “guest” photographer. They told me no other politician would think of doing it.

“That’s for me,” I said.

The shoot was to take place in the “Playboy Suite” of the Palms Casino-Hotel. You can imagine what the room looked like; a huge bed, lots of mirrors, and this big picture of Hugh Hefner on the wall behind the headboard. I got there early, and the staff could see I was a little nervous. You see, I knew I would have to answer to a higher authority—my wife.

There was a whole crew in the room and then in walked Irina Voronina, the Russian model who was the playmate for January 2001. Blonde hair, blue eyes, in perfect shape. Not a blemish on her body—just gorgeous. She was wearing a red satin robe.

The crew was making small talk, trying to get me to relax. Someone poured me a martini. Irina and I chatted, and I tried to focus on her face and have a discussion. I relaxed a little. I can do this, I thought. Just aim and shoot. Out came the cameras, and off came her robe. Then very slowly she took off her bra and then her panties. I figured she did this slowly so as not to shock me and cause my heart to burst through my chest.

I was determined to make this work and not to take any pictures that would embarrass my family. Then I looked up and saw Hefner staring at me. I don’t know why, but I couldn’t focus. His portrait was distracting. They hung some of Irina’s undergarments over the picture, but that didn’t do any good. So we took Hef’s picture down off the wall and put it in the closet.

After that, I was fine. The shoot went off without a hitch, and I got some nice pictures. Before we left, we took Hefner’s portrait out of the closet and put it back up on the wall behind the bed.

When I got home that night, Carolyn greeted me with a kiss, handed me a martini, and said one of the misanthropic pundits from the local media had called her and asked, “What do you think of your husband taking pictures of a naked lady?”

Carolyn is sharp. She was ready.

“All I can tell you is that Oscar came home with a smile on his face,” she told the reporter.

Later I got invited to the fiftieth anniversary party of
Playboy
at Hefner’s mansion. It was awesome; game rooms, tennis courts, a zoo, and a stunning pool area that included a patio, a grotto, a sauna, and a bathhouse. The event was packed. Hollywood movie stars, athletes, movers and shakers, all in various stages of undress.

Hef took the stage and made a speech. Then he said, “I want you all to meet my good friend Oscar Goodman. Oscar’s the guy who put me back in the closet.”

Being mayor wasn’t all fun and games, of course. But I also enjoyed the battles that came with being in office. I like to say that my twelve years were “Biblical”—there was feast and there was famine. The economy played a big part in that. Las Vegas always is at risk when there is a downturn, and the horror of September 11, 2001, was also a factor.

I had always been a staunch supporter of organized labor, and the unions in turn had largely supported me politically. I refused to attend the grand opening of the Hofbräuhaus, a massive restaurant and beer hall that opened in 2004. Both the Jewish Defense League and the Carpenter’s Union were picketing the place—the JDL because Hitler had begun planning the Third Reich at a meeting in the original Hofbräuhaus in Germany, and
the Carpenters Union because of some labor issues in the construction of the place.

I honored the union’s line and wouldn’t attend the grand opening.

In another instance, the Culinary Union, which has more than 70,000 members in our city, had thrown up an invisible picket line around Sheldon Adelson’s Venetian Hotel. The Jewish Federation wanted to hold a fundraiser there with me as the honoree. I refused to cross the picket line (even though, because it was “invisible,” there were actually no union members marching with picket signs). They moved the event to another hotel. That resulted in bad blood between Adelson and me, but I hope that time has begun to heal it.

I believed in what unions stood for, or at least in what they used to stand for: protecting the worker and making sure he or she got a fair deal in exchange for an honest day’s work. I’m not so sure that’s the case anymore. I think unions have become vehicles for their leadership to wield power and leverage deals for their own benefit, rather than for their membership.

I clashed with the Culinary Union over development plans for downtown. Specifically, we went to war over a proposal to build a new city hall. The union packed a city council meeting at which this project was being discussed. I looked out and saw this sea of red-shirted union members. I’m not sure they knew why they were there, but their leadership had called them out.

We intended to use city redevelopment funds to pay for the cost of the next city hall. It was a crucial part of the downtown revitalization. Redevelopment funds were also crucial to other projects that were planned for that area. But the union, or at least its pseudo-intellectual leaders, decided to rail against the proposal, arguing that taxpayers would foot the bill for these projects. That wasn’t the case, but that didn’t stop the union
leadership from calling the plan “financially irresponsible” and claiming that taxpayers would be “on the hook” if the plan went forward.

The union decided to petition for an “initiative,” which would have put the plan up for a public vote. This not only jeopardized the new City Hall plan, but all the projects for downtown. If every one of them had to be decided by a public vote, we’d never be able to move forward. The easiest way to get a “no” vote is to claim that whatever is planned is going to increase taxes. The claim doesn’t have to be true to be effective. That’s what we had to deal with.

I spoke out against the initiative and the union. “They’re evil,” I said of the proponents of the initiative. “There’s no question in my mind that the leadership of the Culinary Union is using this as leverage. They’re trying to blackmail the city. They want us to guarantee them jobs in all this new development. This has nothing to do with a new City Hall.”

Right after that, Carolyn’s and my cars were vandalized. Two large boulders that decorated our front lawn next to our carport were heaved through the back windows of our cars. We had the windows repaired, and two days later the boulders were thrown through the windows again. They were so big it would have taken more than one person to lift and throw them.

After a court fight and a lawsuit, the union backed away from its plan for an initiative. But the whole process soured me on organized labor. This redevelopment project was going to create new jobs and generate new taxes for the city. Why would an organization that represents workers—any kind of workers—oppose something like that when the economy was tanking and people were losing jobs? I just didn’t get it.

Today I question whether unions have outlived their usefulness. Many are now tools of their leaders, a few self-aggrandizing jerks who make decisions without consulting the rank-and-file.
When they are doing what they’re supposed to do, unions help advance the public good. But today, unions, and particularly those leading unions, have lost touch with reality.

I came up against the unions again when they represented the city workers. It was another battle that we fought and won, but the fact that we had to fight at all is what bothered me. We were in tough economic times—not just Las Vegas, but the whole country. We can argue forever about how we got there and who was to blame, but part of being a leader is to address the problem. When something goes wrong, you can either try to fix it, or look for somebody to blame. Playing the blame game may be good politics, but it’s not good government.