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The grifter’s paradise

Daniel H. Stewart
Daniel H. Stewart
Opinion
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In his autobiographical book Down and Out In Paris and London, George Orwell describes living in Paris shortly after World War I. The Paris of those days also teemed with Russians exiled after the Bolshevik Revolution. Many were veterans of the Great War, and many of those waited tables in Parisian restaurants. Among the Russian expats was a Duke, whom, it seems, labored nowhere. He’d dine at the most expensive places, ring up a large bill, and then ask to speak to the Russian staff. While flattering them with stories about the Russian military’s heroics, he’d notice he’d left his wallet at home. The Duke needed a loan, and the waiters obliged, aware that they’d never see their money again. They didn’t mind, thought Orwell, “a duke is a duke, even in exile.” 

Orwell details a type of grift with a long history, and one that seems everywhere today, including (especially?) in Nevada. Despite our relatively small population, the Silver State has been a significant player on the national political stage for generations. Indeed, Nevada voters have voted for the winning presidential candidate all but twice (1976 and 2016) since 1912. Throw in many consequential U.S. Senate and House races, and consequential senators — Majority Leader Harry Reid and President Ronald Reagan’s “First Friend,” U.S. Senator Paul Laxalt — and it is hard to remember a recent Nevada election that did not have national implications. 

Every even-numbered year, we are therefore bombarded with political pleas and savvy ads.  No doubt, when it comes to politics, Nevada matters. The problem is that when Nevadans start believing they matter too much, they may become prime targets for political grift. Nevada might even be the grifter’s paradise. Just as our beloved casinos have harnessed human nature into service to the house, so too have political sophisticates found fame and fortune by mastering Nevadans’ political predilections. 

Today’s political grifters run a predictable scheme. Armed with bold assurances, they tap into their donors’ political passions and outrages in order to raise individual profiles — and substantial sums of money, all while knowing full well that they can’t or won’t fulfill any of their promises. They profit on the unmet needs of their victims, who, quite frankly, don’t really seem to care. 

Take one recent national political movement in which Nevada played a starring role, and that had more than a faint air of grift. Former President Trump raised more than $250 million dollars after election day —  and after it became apparent that President Biden was likely to win. Trump assembled that impressive financial haul based on bogus claims of mass election fraud. Most donors probably thought they were funding his efforts to win the election in court — indeed, the fundraising emails told them they were doing just that. But of the $250 million dollars he raised, only about $8.8 million was actually spent on Trump’s various legal challenges. Where did the other $241,000,000 go? The world — and his supporters — may never know.

President Trump filed multiple lawsuits in Nevada courts making multiple outrageous claims about Nevada’s  elections. So much so that tens of thousands of Nevadans now openly distrust our entire electoral system. (I would be very interested to know how much of the money that President Trump raised in Nevada’s name was actually spent in Nevada. My guess is not much.) Nevadans gave freely of their time, their deepest passions, and maybe even their hard earned cash. And all we got in return were vitriolic press conferences, slanderous allegations, further painful divisions and challenges to our electoral votes. The scars of 2020 may never fully heal here.   

That said, I do not mean to imply that there is something partisan about grift. President Trump’s election-fraud scheme just happens to be the most recent and most significant example I have seen in Nevada. But grifters are equal-opportunity opportunists, and victims come in all shapes and sizes, and from all ends of the political spectrum. W.C Fields proclaimed, “you can’t cheat an honest man.” I have spent more than a decade working in Nevada politics, and there are very few of even the most dedicated (Republican and Democratic) activists who I would call truly dishonest. Most rarely seek any real personal gain — at least not personal financial gain. They earnestly believe in the causes they champion, and they may even be in the right. And right or wrong, good or ill, they seek to benefit or burden society as a whole. 

From what I have seen, though, political grifters and their victims do have a symbiotic relationship of sorts. One that often boggles the mind. Christopher Hitchens once noted that the “highest art in low politics is to be able to induce the masses to invest their own sense of dignity in yours. Then, if you are exposed as a fraud, they will be exposed as credulous: a conclusion they approach with a natural human reluctance.” 

The late Mr. Hitchens may be right, but he is also a tad too mean for my taste. Many Nevadans — and humans the world over — long to contribute, to participate, to make a difference. Their commitment is commendable. And even in the grips of what looks like grift to us, they feel like they are effectuating real change. The getting is in the giving. 

Of course, the injured party’s unwillingness or inability to cry foul even after obvious failures makes political grift far easier for non-participants to tolerate or ignore. We don’t really sympathize all that much with the boxer knocked silly, either. And who are we to say that the players did not get the benefit of their bargain? Indeed, in many instances, political grift might be a victimless crime (or no crime at all). But that does not make grift harmless, especially if the costs spread through society at large. 

Nevadans understand all too well the price of allegedly “costless” scams. 2007’s housing bubble looked pretty victimless too. Who got hurt? The financial industry made interest-bearing loans, homebuilders and construction workers got work, sellers pocketed equity, realtors made commissions, and people got houses. Was it really so bad if too many people got houses they ultimately could not afford?  Talk through it that way, and it seems as innocent now as it did then.

Of course, there was nothing harmless about it. Our global economy nearly buckled. Nevada barely survived. We led the nation in foreclosures, and housing values all across the state plummeted, while job losses sky-rocketed. Today, 13 years later, some homes still have not recovered their pre-2008 values. 

Political grift at today's levels poses similar systemic risks. Nevadans are putting their own money behind their voice, and paying for a seat at the table. What happens when they consistently end up with neither — or nothing at all? Eventually they may give up and lose all trust in our institutions. That would be a sad result, but not the worst that could happen. The real fear is not that victims lose faith in the grift, but that they lose all skepticism of it. Proper republican democracy runs on zeal. It’s archenemy is futility, not apathy.

Like nearly all Nevadans, I do not want to settle policy disputes with force or fraud, but by elected lawmakers using bills and laws. Grifting off our political convictions, however, pushes us into dangerous territory. Promising more and more, while delivering less and less, is not an approach to politics or governing that ends in anything but disaster. Grift does more than fail to satiate Nevadans hungry for change, it also makes them even hungrier. When individuals overestimate their own ability to transform the world, while underestimating established institutions’ abilities to do likewise, power won’t be found in politics, but as Lenin boasted, “in the streets.” And when Lenin sounds prescient, I get scared. 

Daniel H. Stewart is a fifth-generation Nevadan and a partner with Hutchison & Steffen. He was Gov. Brian Sandoval’s general counsel and has represented various GOP elected officials and groups.

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