Being Oscar (34 page)

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.

“A bottle of gin,” I said.

They had no idea what a bottle of gin was. I took several other questions, said goodbye, and headed back to City Hall. As I was leaving, the principal said she, the teachers, and the students really enjoyed my visit.

By the time I got back to the office, the phones were ringing off the hook. Reporters from newspapers, television, and radio were calling.

“How could you tell fourth graders to drink gin?” they wanted to know.

Again, it was a question of taking some information and getting it twisted so that it would make a better story. I don’t know who turned me in. There were some other politicians and elected officials at the school that morning, and I think one of them called the media. So now I had to deal with another controversy.

I decided the best way to address it was head-on.

“I gave an honest answer,” I said. “I’m the George Washington of mayors.”

Not everyone was happy with the answer, but a few days later I was speaking at a Rotary Club luncheon and one of the cocktail waitresses came up to me and said she appreciated my honesty. Then she laughed. She said if someone had asked her husband that question, he would have said “porn.”

I think people want their elected officials to be honest. They can see through the bullshit. The problem with politicians today is they’re so worried about getting re-elected that they focus more on polls and worry more about public perception than about doing their job.

I loved being mayor. And I loved the fact that people liked me. For years when I was a defense attorney, I lived in a cocoon. Part of it was the nature of my job and the people I had to deal with. Not only was the job time-consuming, but I had to worry about law enforcement trying to entrap me, so I became ultra-cautious and maybe a little paranoid. But paranoia doesn’t mean you aren’t being targeted.

When I was involved in criminal defense, I would wake up, go to my office, go to court, go home, have a martini and dinner, and go to bed. Then I’d get up the next day and start it all over again. If I had a case out of town, I’d fly out on a Sunday night and wouldn’t be back until Friday evening. I talked to my clients, I dealt with judges and prosecutors, and I spent lots of time in my hotel room prepping for the next day’s court session.

I’d have dinner in my room or in the hotel restaurant, and then I’d have a martini or two at the hotel bar. It was a regimented existence based partly on the nature of my job, which I took very seriously, and partly on my distrust of the way law enforcement played the game. I was an advocate for some high-profile criminals and, as a result, I became a target.

Being mayor was an entirely different experience. For the first time in almost thirty years, I was able to interact with everyone and anyone. I could say and do what I wanted. If I made a mistake—and as much as it pains me to admit it, occasionally I did—it could be corrected. If you make a mistake in a criminal trial, your client ends up in prison. You usually don’t get a “do-over.” But in politics and government, you always have a second chance, and sometimes a third chance. It’s a work in progress.

I really came to enjoy that. And let’s be honest, I also enjoyed the public adulation. There were times when I’d feel like a rock star. I’d show up at a casino or a local restaurant and people would come up to shake my hand, to get a picture taken with me, to ask for my autograph. I billed myself as the “happiest mayor in the universe,” and while that was a branding device, it also was true. The attention was like a narcotic. I was on a high and always wanted more. Anybody who says they don’t enjoy that is lying.