Oscar day in Las Vegas as new mayor prepares to take charge

Tim Dahlberg

Thursday, June 10, 1999 | 9:19 a.m.

Oscar Goodman had a busy first day as mayor-elect of Las Vegas. There were councilmen to meet, interviews to conduct.

And, of course, a basketball game to bet on. This is a gambling town after all.

"I haven't even had time to decide whether I like the Knicks or the Pacers," Goodman said Wednesday.

The morning after completing his transformation from mob lawyer to mayor-elect in a landslide, Goodman was operating at his usual hectic pace, setting the tone for a four-year term that promises to be anything but boring.

He was on the phone with the city manager to make plans for taking over the city on June 28, while making sure he set aside time to appear on some national cable news programs to promote Las Vegas.

"I'm touting the virtues of the greatest city in the world," Goodman said. "I want everyone to know what a great city this is."

After already making converts of Las Vegas voters, Goodman wasted no time in turning his attention to getting support from city officials and bureaucrats he will need to carry out some of his plans to fix the city's infrastructure and attract cutting-edge companies to town.

At least one city councilman liked what he saw.

"I don't think he'll miss a beat," Councilman Larry Brown said. "The learning curve will be instantaneous."

Goodman, whose populist campaign took him from a political nobody to mayor-elect in just four short months, plans to put aside his lucrative law practice to devote his full-time attention to the job of mayor.

He vowed to be both a visionary mayor who builds consensus on a council that will soon be expanded from five to seven members, and one who will readily tackle the mundane chores of day-to-day city life.

He will use the same skills in his new job as he used in persuading juries to let off such clients as Tony "The Ant" Spilotro and Meyer Lansky.

"All I have to do now is try to convince four people to see it my way instead of 12," Goodman said. "It should only take one-third of the effort."

Goodman takes over a city that is booming, fueled by new hotel-casino growth that has, in turn, created a maze of new housing subdivisions on the city's expanding outskirts.

He won office partly on a pledge to make developers pay more to help solve traffic and pollution problems. But on Wednesday he was already on to other issues, like downtown redevelopment and luring high-tech companies to the city.

"They should be coming here, this is the greatest spot in the world," said Goodman, who first came to Las Vegas from Philadelphia as a young attorney in 1965. "The Silicon Valley is too expensive and these companies are looking for other places to locate."

Goodman inherits a job being vacated after eight years by Jan Jones, who often complained that the mayor's position offered little power. Under the city's form of government, the mayor functions basically only as a council member and as the ceremonial head of government.

The city itself doesn't even include the Las Vegas Strip, where huge resorts seem to rise daily, and holds less than half the 1.2 million people in the Las Vegas metropolitan area.

Still, Goodman, who vowed in the campaign to "use the bully pulpit of being mayor" to get his way, will wield wide power both inside and outside the Las Vegas Valley because of both the power of his position and his personality.

"People who don't live here think the mayor of Las Vegas is the mayor of the entire area anyway," Goodman said. "For the people who do live here, this will be a government of the people."