Miller wants chance to fight for city again

Erin Neff

Friday, April 30, 1999 | 11:19 a.m.

Steve Miller was admittedly upset when Las Vegas Mayor Jan Laverty Jones decided not to seek a third term.

A Supreme Court decision in December -- seven years after Miller first took the case to lower courts -- allowed him to proceed with a libel lawsuit against Jones.

This was fresh ammunition for his intended mayoral campaign, which he saw as a chance to once again lock horns with Jones in the political arena. The libel suit stemmed from the 1991 mayor's race pitting Jones against Miller. Toward the end of that campaign, the Jones camp sent a mailer that Miller claimed contained false information about him.

Miller has been a bitter foe of Jones ever since and had looked forward to campaigning mightily against her once again.

But when Jones dropped out of the race and developers Jay Bingham and Mark Fine, Councilman Arnie Adamsen and criminal defense attorney Oscar Goodman stepped in, Miller decided to instead run as a City Council candidate from Ward 1, opposing Councilman Michael McDonald and three other longshot candidates.

Miller, 55, chief executive officer of consulting firm Stephen L. Miller & Associates, served on the City Council from 1987-1991.

Before Bingham dropped out of the race, Miller called him "a gentleman and worthy opponent."

He is less kind toward McDonald, who is heavily criticized in Miller's campaign literature and on his website.

Miller is quick to attack McDonald for his friendship with Rick Rizzolo, owner of the Crazy Horse Too club on South Industrial Road, which competes with Club Paradise, another strip club. Miller is the landlord for Club Paradise but has no other interest in the business.

Miller accuses McDonald of using his council position to help Rizzolo -- asserting that McDonald's aides helped push through a 6,000-square-foot expansion of Crazy Horse without proper city zoning approval. When Miller and his friends protested the expansion, the City Council upheld an earlier zoning board decision allowing the expansion to stay.

McDonald abstained on that vote because of to his friendship with Rizzolo and his retaining, on another matter, the attorney representing Crazy Horse. McDonald, 34, who was first elected to council in 1995 and is seeking re-election, vehemently denies Miller's claims.

"I have never tried to further (Rizzolo's) business," McDonald said.

Although prepared to respond in kind to Miller's attacks, the McDonald campaign is doing its best to avoid engaging Miller in a one-on-one battle.

"My campaign is based on facts," McDonald said, referring to Miller's reputation for concocting theories. Earlier this year, for example, Miller was fined $2,500 by the State Ethics Commission for filing what was termed a "frivolous complaint" against Jones.

Claiming he was mistreated by the Ethics Commission, Miller shrugs off the fine and vows not to pay it.

And in 1993, Miller had a talk radio show on which he repeatedly attacked Mirage Resorts Chairman Steve Wynn. Wynn threatened a lawsuit and Miller agreed to pull his show off the air and write Wynn an apology.

Miller says his authorship of the city's Ethics in Government law was one of his highest accomplishments as a councilman. He denies he is guilty of the type of abuses he rails against.

His own use of the city's official seal on his web site, however, could be interpreted as inappropriate under city code, if the seal is intended to suggest an alignment with his campaign and the city. Miller was accused of the same "inappropriate" use of the city seal when he ran for mayor in 1991.

So why does a businessman who said he was fed up with politics in 1991 want to re-enter the fray?

"Having had such successful experiences while serving at City Hall, I spent the following eight years in private life feeling as though I still have something to offer my neighbors," Miller said.

He's predicting that his website and his mailings will sway enough people to vote for him. Miller spends hours daily adding news articles to his website and researching City Council decisions for ammunition against his opponents.

Miller anticipates that neither candidate will earn the 50 percent plus one vote required to win the seat outright in the primary on May 4.

"I'm anticipating a run-off," Miller said.

Born in Los Angeles, Miller moved to Las Vegas in 1959 when he was 14 so his family could take part in a novelty manufacturing business. But it was the young Miller's invention of the casino dice clock that transformed the tacky novelties into a cash cow.

"My father wanted to see if I was a chip off the old block," Miller said. "So he asked me to develop a product. I got an old clock motor and some dice and made a dice clock. He hated it."

In addition to being a gadget entrepreneur, Miller is a pilot.

From 1980 to 1982, Miller owned Desert Southwest Airlines, which had 14 single- and double-engine small planes that flew tourists over the Grand Canyon. He sold the company, which now operates out of Henderson, to his employees. Miller also has piloted 50 missions for the Angel Planes, a volunteer group of pilots that flies people awaiting transplants to medical centers when organs become available.

Ever an optimist about his own political future, the gate on his home on Westlund Drive bears the letters CC -- for City Council.

SUN REPORTERScott Reeder contributed to this story.