Adelson ad blitz rips at county incumbents

Adrienne Packer

Friday, Oct. 16, 1998 | 11:09 a.m.

The 30-second spot shows Clark County Commissioner Erin Kenny defiantly wagging her finger as a voice-over blasts her for overspending and driving her own business into bankruptcy.

A second commercial, also in black and white, focuses in on Kenny's fellow commissioner, Myrna Williams, and accuses her of being involved in contract schemes in back-room deals.

Nothing unusual about the two commercials scheduled to air during the final two weeks before Election Day, right? Not quite.

These ads are not the commissioners' opponents -- Steve Harney and Mark Smith -- pumping themselves up. They are a sign the much-anticipated assault on the incumbents has been unleashed by arch-rival Sheldon Adelson.

"I think Sheldon has seen what this particular commission is about from inside out and he's tired of it," said Bill Weidner, president of Adelson's Las Vegas Sands Inc.. Weidner said more than $1 million was spent on television ads, radio spots and mailers.

"Essentially, the way the commission is set up is corrupt. It's influenced by special-interest groups."

Adelson's group "Committee for Fairness" distributed the commercials to major Las Vegas television stations Thursday. They will begin airing on most channels today.

Adelson, chairman of Las Vegas Sands Inc., has been at odds with county commissioners for months. He says board members were unfair to him when he went through the licensing process for the $2 billion Venetian hotel-casino, which is under construction on the Strip.

He has funded two unsuccessful attempts to recall Democratic commission chairwoman Yvonne Atkinson-Gates and now his group is trained on Democrats Kenny and Williams.

Last year, after Williams said Adelson tried to sway her vote on a Venetian-related traffic study, the commissioner returned a 1994 campaign contribution check for $12,500.

Last month, a Williams television ad depicting Adelson as Godzilla claimed he was a bully who wanted to take over the commission. Adelson struck back this week.

The commercial sponsored by Committee for Fairness zeroes in on Williams' involvement in awarding concession contracts for McCarran International Airport's new D gates.

The state Ethics Commission initially claimed Williams violated ethics laws by voting for her friend, but the former assemblywoman was later exonerated.

Still, the commercial charges that she "ignored ethics laws she wrote herself."

The ad attacks Kenny for her money management and said during her four-year tenure that Clark County's spending has doubled. Showing a blue collar with a look of concern, the commercial says Kenny wants to overtax people so the county will have more spending money.

"Erin Kenny can't stop spending money," the voice-over says. "Kenny drove her own business to bankruptcy leaving over $1 million of unpaid bills."

Kenny, who denied the allegations, said she and Adelson have never discussed any problems between the two of them.

She said Thursday that at one time during the permitting process, she did not feel the county should issue permits to the Venetian until its representatives had worked out an agreement with neighboring Harrah's over a shared driveway.

Kenny does not feel threatened by Adelson's campaign against her.

"I have an awful lot of confidence in Clark County voters," Kenny said. "I believe they will reject the notion of an out-of-state billionaire coming into Clark County trying to buy three seats on the very board that regulates the business he runs."

There is already one commissioner on the board that Adelson supported. In 1997, Adelson contributed $94,000 to commissioner Lance Malone's campaign. Neither Williams nor Malone returned phone calls Thursday.

Accompanying the commercial spots delivered to area television stations were documents and newspaper articles citing the source of Committee for Fairness's information.

"He (Adelson) thinks we ought to inform the voters of what's going on," Weidner said. "These are what is called issues advocacy; communication of information about issues and individual's stands related to the issues."

The assaults, however, don't end with the commercials. Viewers are given a toll-free telephone number at the conclusion of the ad that encourages people to call the commissioners. In suggests the number is their direct line.

The number, however, links callers to the Committee for Fairness, where a live operator reads from a script and repeats the commercial's allegations. Finally, the operator transfers the call to the Clark County Commission's main number.

Clark County Public Information Officer Tom Warden said the commercials are of concern because they spread misinformation about the county.

"We certainly are not going to get involved in personal campaign issues, but some of this ad campaign paints a negative picture of the County Commission in general," said Warden, who said the county has obtained copies of the ads.

County Manager Dale Askew released a four-page statement late Thursday that rebukes statements made in political commercials -- some of which were funded by Adelson's group -- about the county's financial state.

"We want to get the word out on the misconceptions presented in the ads," Warden said. "This is a huge buy; nobody here has heard of such a thing. That's why we're taking the unprecedented step of answering an ad."

Weidner would not confirm whether another series of commercials will target Democrat Dario Herrera, who is vying for Lorraine Hunt's District G seat.

Herrera said newspaper clippings about an Ethics Commission investigation were mailed to voters in his district. The articles, which did not include the one that said he was exonerated, were mailed in an unmarked envelope.

Weidner said the mailers were not the work of Adelson's group. Milt Doyle, who is running against Herrera, also refused to take credit for the mailers.