Where I Stand: Mistake in judgment is no reason to try to run Gates out of office

Saturday, Oct. 11, 1997 | 7:14 a.m.

The theater of the absurd. Directed and produced by the little minds down the street.

What you are about to read will be mostly unpopular with the good citizens of Clark County who think that politicians are inherently crooked and that their actions should, therefore, always be seen in the worst light possible. But it will be, as always, an honest attempt to keep our lives in this valley in the kind of perspective that is required if we are to grow toward our destiny as a great city. The other direction suits only a favored few in our community.

The subject is daiquiris. The actors on this stage include County Commission Chairwoman Yvonne Atkinson Gates, the Review-Journal and a few of its minor hacks, and a community wanting to be good and do right but which is generally misinformed by those with agendas in conflict with truth and justice. Sounds like the perfect situation for Superman except that in 1997 there are no supermen, just regular folks trying to do what is right.

From a personal standpoint, I am the fortunate one because I missed the first two acts of the play while I was in London at the International Association of Gaming Attorneys, which meets annually to try to understand where the land mines of public and legal resistance are placed to thwart the spread of the industry that made Las Vegas famous. As such, I missed an earlier opportunity to add some balance to the ugliness that the R-J had conjured up in an effort to destroy a good and decent citizen of this state.

After all these years of competing with the other newspaper, you would think that I'd have a handle on just why it takes such delight in tearing down most of what is good in this town. Alas, I have failed. For there is no responsible rationale to explain their actions. Unless, of course, we can ascribe a political agenda to that Neanderthalish editorial consortium down the street. Once done, much of what they do makes some kind of fiendish sense.

The issue in the present case is the involvement by Chairman Gates in a start-up company that makes daiquiris and has just entered into a lease with the MGM Grand for 700 square feet. For the opportunity to test its business theory that people will purchase a sufficient amount of the liquid to turn a profit at the end of the year, Yvonne and her partner, Ed Nigro, obligated their business to pay $200,000 per year. That's a lot of money and doesn't begin to account for the dollars required to build a store and operate the business. And given the track record of a number of leases that have come and gone not only at the MGM but at most of the hotel concession areas in this town, the venture is far from a sure thing. In short, it is a classic exercise of what we call in this country the free enterprise system.

The wrinkle in this deal, of course, is that Yvonne is a county commissioner and the MGM, the only hotel with which her former company has a lease (I say former because she has withdrawn from the venture) is subject to the jurisdiction of the commission. That presents opportunities for conflicts and that also presented an opportunity for the Review-Journal to attempt to destroy a public servant who refused to do that newspaper's bidding. To be sure, Commissioner Gates gets a big assist in helping to harm a solid and responsible public career because she made a few judgmental mistakes, not in going into the business, but in the way she handled the matter from the outset.

But a mistake in judgment is one of the things we humans make --- constantly. That is no reason for the piling on that is being done happily down the street and now, it seems, at the Ethics Commission, which loves to conform to the Review-Journal's script. There's a scary thought!

I suppose we can go through a long, drawn-out rationale supporting the ability of people who hold elected, part-time offices to be able to earn a living in the private sector. I'm not sure, though, how successful that might be given the fact that most elected officials make more money from their part-time public jobs than do private citizens from their full-time jobs. Hence, a monetary gap that is emotionally too far to jump.

Suffice it to say that we have a choice in Nevada. We can force people who do part-time work, such as county and city commissioners, the lieutenant governor and other similar posts, to refrain from making a living in the real world, in which case we might be discouraging the best, brightest and most energetic of our citizens to get involved in public service. Or we can decide that they should work full time for us and, as a consequence, pay them accordingly. I can just hear the howls from the anti-government Review-Journal when the public decides to raise the salaries of the elected officials whom that newspaper hates!

But until we change the law, part-time officials are allowed to have outside incomes. Good sense would suggest that they be careful and circumspect in how they approach any outside earning opportunities. In this case, Yvonne could have used a little better sense in how she approached her business. But according to the law and established practice, it is not an issue whether she should have a business in the first place.

What the major player in this fiasco, the R-J, has done is tap into the public's desire for clean and responsive government and muddle it up sufficiently with half-truths and outright distortions so the people now believe Yvonne Atkinson Gates has misused her position. That is simply not true.

What is true is that the other newspaper has muddied up the waters and it has done so because Gates is not of their political persuasion. I daresay none of the elected officials should be that demented, although a few of them mouth the right words when necessary. Gates gave the R-J and its minions -- who also are not without incredible conflicts of their own -- the ammunition to shoot her down. Not content with informing the public of the potential for abuse, that paper will do all it can to snuff out the political life of a lady this community should be proud to have in its leadership.

Is she perfect? Of course not. Does she try her best to represent all the people and especially those whose voices cannot be heard over the din of self-interested and self-absorbed power brokers? Absolutely.

So, before the good people in this community jump on the bandwagon trying to run Yvonne Atkinson Gates out of office and out of town, let them take a deep breath and assess their own culpability. They accept everything the R-J prints without a whimper of dissent or a question of motive. They are quick to accuse and accept the accusations about anyone in public office just because they want to believe the worst -- a climate fostered by the anti-everything rantings of libertarian rags like the Review-Journal. And, they have a streak of jealousy within them that makes it easy to condemn those who work hard and prosper as a result, rather than accept the fact that their own success is in their hands.

Shakespeare said the whole world is a stage and we are but players. If that is the case, the Review-Journal has directed a theater of the absurd in which it is using the people as pawns in its plan to control all that goes on in this town. Commissioner Gates won't toe their political line, so she must go even though she performs her public duty with integrity and the best intentions.

As part of the audience and part of the play, we have a choice. How we choose to run our life and grow our future is the final act. We can choose the easy way and accept what the Review-Journal says is truth, its truth. In that case we will elect people who know nothing, do nothing and succeed at nothing except that which the Review-Journal decides should be done.

Or we can challenge them like we do ourselves. In that case they will fail, just as we do from time to time. That's the way, though, to good government. Because that's the way that people like Yvonne Atkinson Gates will continue to offer themselves for public service to this community. And that's the way democracy is supposed to function.

Warts and all.

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