Rabbi: Harry Reid told me he is concerned about Culinary campaign hurting Las Vegas

Wednesday, March 21, 2012 | 3:25 p.m.

Rabbi Mel Hecht, who is among a group of religious leaders supporting the Culinary Union’s fight against Station Casinos, says Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told him last week that he was worried about the labor organization’s campaign hurting Las Vegas.

“Harry was somewhat concerned of it discouraging people to come to Las Vegas,” Hecht said of the union’s tactic of writing letters to Station vendors to discourage events at company properties. “He said people didn’t see the distinction of Station properties.”

Knowing how incendiary such a statement might be from Reid, whom the Culinary helped save in 2010, I asked Hecht twice more about the conversations and he repeated it. “He (Reid) said this gives off a bad image and discourages people from people coming to Las Vegas,” Hecht said.

(No response yet from Reid, but I will add if and when….)

UPDATE: A Reid spokeswoman responds: "No. This isn't the conversation that occurred."

I called Hecht after reading this item . It occurred to me the rabbi might be the “informed source” since he was quoted earlier, so I called him and here’s what he told me:

About a week ago, Hecht called Reid “on behalf of the Culinary” to see if the senator would be a peacemaker in the escalating war between the union and the casino giant. When Reid returned the call to the well-known community religious leader, Hecht said, Reid told him he “had to remain neutral. But he said in the same breath he was concerned about what they were doing with vendors.”

Hecht said a few days later he arranged meetings with members of the clergy backing the Culinary – the letter they signed last year is posted at right – to try to find a way not to offend the Catholic Church at the Gorman High School celebration slated the same day (Thursday) as the Culinary protest at Red Rock. I wrote about that issue blog on this blog on Tuesday and the “newspaper” had a column and blog post about it today, essentially taking the Station point of view that the Culinary was making a huge mistake because of the Knight of the Gael. It has long been thought that the reason the Catholic clergy have not jointed the coalition is because the Fertitta family is a mega-donor to the diocese.

Hecht told me he would not attend the rally – although other clergymen will – because “I’m not a patsy. I’m not going to be there just to perform.” He added that the “problem with the Culinary is they plan something (referring to the protest Thursday) and then they tell us about it.”

The Culinary, not surprisingly, declined to comment.

UPDATE: After I asked for a reaction from Reid, his office did not comment to me but called Hecht. The rabbi then called me back to say he wanted to make clear "there was never a faltering of support by Harry for the union."