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In defense of Mayor Goodman

Dayvid Figler
Dayvid Figler
Opinion
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The evolution of the role of mayor in the biggest little city in Clark County includes all manner of white people trying to hustle atop city government, including force-of-nature Oscar B. Goodman. In what follows, we’ll roll down memory lane as fast as a high speed rail from Victorville to Las Vegas until we come to Carolyn Goodman, a.k.a. the conductor of this week’s locally based and globally spotted train wreck.

In the ‘70s and ‘80s, the position of the mayor of Las Vegas was either ceremonial — as with always smiling, ribbon-cutting, central casting favorite Bill Briare — or a sort of wheeler dealer position — as in the case of “ethical” business guy Ron Lurie. In the ‘90s, under ice cream and car dealership spokeswoman (and Stanford grad) Jan Jones, the job became one of head cheerleader. Then with the 1999 election of national figurehead, mob lawyer, gin spokesman and pulpit bullyboy, Oscar Goodman, the role became one of super cheerleader. Oscar was like no other and to many (like me) he epitomized Vegas.

Oscar’s story and immersion in Las Vegas history both prior to and after his three terms as mayor (as well as all the foibles and follies) is well-documented, so it doesn’t need repeating. And while not particularly close to him over the years, I wouldn’t say I wasn’t close, either. He was a valuable mentor when I was a new defense lawyer and always supported my efforts to do better. As one of the champions of investment in downtown Las Vegas - then fighting an economic downturn - he convinced me to come back to the old neighborhood (where I’ve gleefully lived for the past 20 years), appointed me to a city redevelopment board and eventually also to a vacant spot on the Las Vegas Municipal Court bench. I’ve read poetry with the man on a downtown stage and once wrote a cover story for a national magazine (cheekily) suggesting he was poised to be the country’s first Jewish president – sorry Bernie! There’s a lot I like about Oscar Goodman to this day, even as I’ve also never been shy about criticizing him (to my chagrin – he doesn’t like critics) on topics near and dear to my heart like his mean-spirited approaches to homelessness.  

The thing about Oscar is that he always viewed himself as the epitome of the Vegas story, and felt that anything he did as he grew in popularity promoted the message: Come to Vegas and don’t worry what people say or think of you. He wasn’t far off. Las Vegas has depths and levels of superficiality and artifice that glow a funky light on the human condition. Generations of outsiders to this day can’t seem to wrap their heads around our durative appeal. It was an odd, but never unexplainable choice Las Vegas citizens made in elevating the apolitical criminal defense attorney to the arguably highest profile (though not really powerful) elected position in the whole state. He defended accused killers (gross), yet somehow engendered such good feels that he was still regularly asked to speak to tiny school kids (which didn’t even always go horribly).

As the surreal spokesmodel for Las Vegas proper, he was able to get some things done — most notably, his unwavering effort to reverse the course of entropy that had hit the city’s core, paving the way (literally) for a new downtown to eventually emerge, and which I contend led to making all of Las Vegas a more livable and vibrant community. As a lawyer, he knew how to advocate and win; as a caricature (by his own making) with shticks galore, he had the freedom to breeze easily through any tough situation and was bound only by his own imagination. He became a beacon for tourists, new residents and new business, even as he also regularly taunted threats of violence at his detractors and refused to yield to even the most modest criticism.

Oscar forever changed what Las Vegas felt its mayor should be.

When Oscar termed out of office, I was excited to support my friend and neighbor Chris Giuchigliani (aka Chris G.) who at the time was serving ably as my county commissioner and prior to that as my Assembly representative. She had announced her intentions to run well ahead of the election and was by far the favorite candidate of my circle of friends and colleagues. Chris G. is a personable thinker and a rare doer in politics, a special education teacher with a knack for policy and planning. In a word, she was ideally and uniquely qualified.

There was never a doubt that once elected, Chris G. would bring the city governance back to a more grounded space. And while she certainly wasn’t as large-as-life as Oscar, she understood the need to cultivate the life he had given to the city. She also was coming from the county, which presumably meant the long overdue collaboration on issues of mutual interest could finally be addressed. In a word, Chris G. was the presumptive cure to the wild and fun hangover the city had from the Oscar show.

But then, on the second to last day of filing, Carolyn Goodman, wife of the eclectic mayor, entered the race. Oscar was a notable part of Carolyn’s first campaign — she would often (and then again) announce herself to any room while working the voters that she was “Carolyn Goodman, the mayor’s wife. I’m running for mayor.” In 2011, not a lot of voters knew much about her except for that fact, and that she seemed poised, passionate and primed to extend a dynasty of sorts. 

I knew from the moment she announced that it was the end to any chance for a nuanced discussion of policy, practice or planning. This was going to be a straight up popularity spectacle no matter how hard either candidate would try to talk about pressing issues. As a Las Vegas observer, I also knew from the instant she handed out the first casino chip with her image on it that Carolyn Goodman would handily become our city’s new mayor. Las Vegas has always been drawn to the hottest light. And like the vast majority of people who bothered to vote (municipal elections are notoriously low-turnout), I held out reasonable hope that she could build off of the good part of her husband’s mantle while leaving behind his predictable shtick and unpredictable vitriol. The new cheerleader was on track for coronation; Chris G. would be left holding the metaphorical trombone on the sideline of this important show.

Well, potentially important show. 

Plenty of pundits have said that Las Vegas — as an incorporated city with defined boundaries — doesn’t matter. That despite its big name, the city doesn’t have any of the biggest prizes (or biggest tax generators). That all of the revenue from the Strip goes to the county, and it’s the chair of the County Commission who wields true power. I get all that, but I take offense. The Las Vegas City Council has great sway in the quality of life of its 640,000+ residents. It controls what gets built where, how the residents are valued when they raise concerns about challenges to their neighborhoods, and creating an environment in which a person would want to live, work, play and contribute. It deals with big city issues including how to address the homeless population, how to contend with an invasion of short term rentals, marijuana dispensaries and big developments, and how to attract new businesses. And as partners in some forums and overseers of others, it is a key component in other conversations, as well. That’s important.

It’s also important to a tourist city to have a pied piper. A cheerleader. A camera-ready figurehead ready to do damage control or open up the floodgates to get bigger, faster, stronger. This is true whether it’s the municipality's actual jurisdiction, or an area people THINK OF when they hear Las Vegas. It has been a long-time benefit to the lookie-loos to have a good advocate, and in Vegas it became the person with the word “Mayor” in front of his or her name. Ideally, it would be someone who also was good at all the actual governance stuff back at City Hall. 

Carolyn Goodman has had a mixed ride as mayor. Our expectations were that her time would simply run like the Godfather, er, Oscar Part II; however, it turned into an uneven and confusing narrative journey, one that definitely had highlights but in the end will not get the same reverence of the original. So, more like Godfather, Part III.

There has been appreciable good. The seeds of the downtown resurgence planted by Oscar soon saw the arrival of growth and many sweet fruits under her guidance and encouragement. There have been ample developments, improvements and progressive undertakings under her watch. Mayor Carolyn and I share a common philosophy that what’s good for Las Vegas as a city is good for Las Vegas as a concept and in turn for the state of Nevada and all those who reside here. 

Yet, every major criticism she’s sustained for her forays into policy, law and implementation stems from her far too myopic version of how we ought to sustain our lucrative viability, sometimes at the cost of reason and logic. Growth has become her prime directive, and has absolutely tracked her (and really all Las Vegans) to this moment in time. This trajectory is exemplified by the mayor’s relationship with tech superstar and Zappos guy Tony Hsieh, alongside his “downtown project” (DTP). For all the good and vital investment of resources and energy it has delivered (along with a substantial positive on the balance sheet), deeper digs into the relationship reveal something more chaotic to the point of possible long-term detriment to Las Vegas.  

Despite the signs, the never-back-down mayor continues to insist, like her predecessor, that this developer remains central to the Goodman legacy. This despite knowing the word “community” was wisely removed from DTP’s own mission statement. The mayor will still attempt to sell you on the earnest claim that they’re a godsend, even after her clumsy, bend-over backwardness to foster the whims of DTP thrust her smack into the middle of an unforced scandal.  

It makes some sense. In the early days of the relationship, the mayor was rewarded with glowing press accounts and lots of “buzz” around her successes and those of her city. No doubt primed by constant references in those stories to Tony Hsieh’s tech tales and Burning Man mantras, the mayor became noticeably seduced. Whatever personal philosophy she had held to that point, she quickly shifted to entrenchment with a mashup of free-market platitudes and magical thinking that has come to define her position in the public eye.   

Which brings us to this week. There was a lot going on in that Anderson Cooper interview, and people have piled on. There’s a clamor right now that Mayor Goodman is an outlier and embarrassment to be ignored, or worse, discarded. That what she said in front of millions of viewers was not only “ignorant” but dangerous. That something must be wrong with the person fighting to get people into public spaces during a time of pandemic, ignoring a consensus from math and science. That her choice of off-the-cuff anecdotes were tone-deaf and her defensiveness about Las Vegas and its heavily marketed mystic power devolved into a backfire of confusion.  

And it did. It epically backfired. Many of her jurisdictional superiors governor, county commissioners, a U.S. representative) immediately went into distancing mode or attack mode. Three of her own colleagues from the seven-member Las Vegas City Council penned an op-ed preaching calm and thoughtfulness in direct contradiction to the wishes of the mayor. And then came the outrageous memes and comic videos and calls for recall. What started as necessary pushback and damage control devolved into a distasteful splatterfest. Most certainly in the time it has taken me to pen this, even more screeds condemning her have been published.

I get the concerns. She put on her cheerleader outfit for a rugby scrimmage but then freaked out so hard upon arrival that she started speaking in tongues and only half-remembering her cheers. It did not make her look good. It did not make Las Vegas seem stable in a time when reassuringly beckoning the nervous masses to come and play is soon going to be vital.  

But it's bad form to stick it to her so hard right now. She was just trying to save her town, entirely consistent with her we-can-do-it philosophy that has worked so well in the past. Every municipal leader in the United States is grappling with finding necessary balance in answer to the pandemic and its aftermath. Her conclusions (and philosophy) are way off, but her concern still needs to be addressed. Unity with the governor’s message would be helpful, but the subsequent unity in attacking someone who has little sway to change the “agreed-upon approach” is a distraction from looking at the shortcomings of the “agreed-upon approach.”  

Rapidly "canceling" the mayor in the midst of a public health crisis does not seem to me to be a considered means to ensure that Las Vegas is not in fact acting rashly. And finally — sorry if this sounds pedantic — she’s 81 now, and is very publicly recovering from cancer and rebounding from chemotherapy.  

People may think her time has come and gone, for recent reasons as well as for her remarkably misguided stance on homelessness, the echoing shadow of insensitivity, and a charge of outright prejudice. And for her resistance to backing down, or admitting she was wrong, instead reinvesting in that damn philosophy no matter the emotional or real cost.

I know this doesn’t sound like much of a defense, as advertised, but we’re almost there.

Yes, Mayor Carolyn Goodman has gone very deeply down a dark path as she rides out her final term of office. Like her husband before her, she believes she has governed and promoted on an instinct that has served her seemingly well — until quite recently. And the sequence of events that brought us here were bizarre.

First, outlandish charm-mistress Michele Fiore — a larger-than-life, parody-inspiring, gun-totin’, calendar-posing neo-Oscar — got herself elected to City Council and has been causing chaos ever since. Also, AirBnB’s blew up. Also, Councilman Steve Seroka resigned in disgrace in the middle of a protracted fight with the developers of Badlands/Queensridge golf course (costing the city millions). Also, homelessness became too visible to ignore. All this as the mayor gained a majority of conservative City Council members with little appetite for thoughtfulness or measured discourse.

And then COVID-19 happened.

I’m not suggesting that the criticism of Mayor Goodman doesn’t warrant consideration, including those who pontificate that we’d be better without her or who spend tweet time wondering about a world where Chris G. had won that first race. (This same daydreaming will also happen if Gov. Sisolak doesn’t soon convincingly announce pandemic economic recovery plans.) What I am suggesting is that Mayor Goodman is an irreplaceable asset to Las Vegas, and it would serve our community to help convince her that she’s wrong, and why, and find common ground rather than waste further energy deriding and humiliating her.  

What’s good for Las Vegas is good for all Nevada. Frankly, we don’t have time for recalls nor for focusing any more energy on the “Pooper with Anderson Cooper” when there’s a pandemic and related suffering happening. I believe Carolyn Goodman when she says she acts with love in her heart. I’m convinced that she can turn this situation around and use her prominence, passion and persistence in the way we need most: to reverse other bad city policies, bridge the divide with other municipalities and work with smart people towards facilitating a viable post-pandemic plan.

Prior to writing Mayor Goodman off, can we not give her the same chance at redemption that her city has adopted as its cornerstone? Especially given how the Goodmans are so undeniably, almost uniquely, representative of the mojo that is Las Vegas? I don’t know whether Mayor Goodman even wants to stay mayor, or whether she has finally come to understand that she doesn’t actually have “the strength of a pack of wolves” as she has hyperbolically proclaimed. But knowing her to the extent I do, I can’t imagine that if she believes she has something left to offer that could help bring Las Vegas back around (and I think she does) she wouldn’t want to do everything in her power to do so. It doesn’t matter whether that power is real or perceived. Carolyn Goodman, the well-known mayor of Las Vegas, has the skills to get the train back on the track, even if we agree she is the one responsible for her own derailment in the first place.  We simply need to all talk it out before she makes her next move — preferably not on CNN.  

Dayvid Figler is a criminal defense attorney based in Las Vegas. He previously served as an associate attorney representing indigent defendants charged with murder for the Clark County Special Public Defender’s office. During his legal tenure, he served a brief appointment as a Las Vegas Municipal Court judge. Figler has been cited as a noted legal expert in many places including the New York Times, National Public Radio, Newsweek, USA Today, Court TV and the Los Angeles Times. His award-winning radio essays have appeared on KNPR as well as on NPR’s All Things Considered program.

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