Neal relishes lone wolf role

Stacy J. Willis

Sunday, Feb. 27, 2000 | 9:30 a.m.

State Sen. Joe Neal likes to tell political war stories. Most of them go like this: An injustice exists, and the establishment isn't doing anything to change it. So Neal goes to battle to right the wrong.

His favorite part of each story -- the part where his grin gets bigger and his voice gets louder -- is always where he gets one-up on his opponents, either by outmaneuvering them with legislative rules or catching them in their own doublespeak.

But Neal, D-North Las Vegas, doesn't always win his political battles. He tells many a yarn in which nothing has changed in the end. What starts out like a David vs. Goliath tale often turns out to be the story of Sisyphus pushing a boulder up a mountain only to have it roll right back down.

Most recently Neal has taken to rolling a boulder up the side of the monolithic casino industry. His initiative petition proposes a 5 percent tax increase on the gross revenues of casinos that take in more than $1 million per month. By raising the rate from 6.25 percent to 11.25 percent, Neal estimates another $388 million would be added to state coffers annually.

Signatures are being gathered around the state in attempt to circumvent the Legislature, where Neal's proposal to raise the industry's taxes failed in the last session.

"I do what I think is right, and if I don't succeed, at least I know I have done the right thing," Neal said.

His version of "right" is rooted in the struggle between the Haves and the Have-Nots. Neal is a man who has seen himself as an outsider to the power structure for most of his life.

He grew up poor and black in racist 1940s Louisiana. When he first moved to Las Vegas, blacks were not allowed in many casinos. He represents a district -- North Las Vegas -- that has traditionally been the overlooked stepsister to Cinderella Las Vegas. He is Catholic in a community of black Baptists. He is pro-U.S. Department of Energy in Nevada's field of anti-nuke Democrats.

And he is the only member of his caucus to publish his support of Bill Bradley instead of Al Gore on Bradley's website.

In a world where politicians are almost universally believed to be bought and sold by special interests, some view Neal's independent approach as idealistic and refreshing.

But others say his lone-wolf logic is "devastatingly twisted" and that pragmatically, he sometimes makes himself irrelevant by standing so far from his legislative colleagues.

"Joe is a very smart man, but I wouldn't call him the most effective legislator. He thrives on being a gadfly," said Mike Sloan, a Mandalay Resort Group vice president who has known Neal since they served together in the Legislature 20 years ago.

Neal never shies away from being called a maverick or a burr in the saddle.

"They're calling me Old Crazy Joe now," said Neal with a bellowing laugh. "Let 'em talk."

Coming of age

Neal, 65, is sitting with his back against the wall in Sugar Babe's cafe in North Las Vegas, where Sugar Babe herself is cleaning up his plate of barbecued chicken.

Two paintings hang on the wall behind him: One is of black Moses, the other is of a little black child hoisting bales of cotton onto a truck. Neal favors the one with the truck, he says, because he used to load sacks of cotton himself.

"I grew up in an agrarian place -- a plantation," he says of Mounds, La., a rural town where he attended grade school and high school because "it was the only place (he) could rely on getting steady meals."

He says his heroes are the people who urged him to get out of the racist South.

"There was a white man named Jones who took and weighed my bags of cotton before loading them on the truck. He told me I had potential. 'But there's nothing for you here. Go somewhere else and make something of yourself,' he told me.

"My family couldn't get a newspaper, so Jones would save his old newspapers so that I could read them. He'd give them to me in stacks. I remember reading about things outside of Louisiana. It made a big difference to me," Neal says.

Neal moved to Las Vegas in 1954, and shortly thereafter joined the Air Force.

In the military he worked in New Mexico on the space program, he said, but when his tour was finished, he went to Southern University in Louisiana to study history, political science and law.

He returned to Nevada in 1964 and went to work for Titanium Metals Corp. and then Reynolds Electrical & Engineering, where he eventually retired after 25 years in personnel administration.

He made his move into politics in the mid 1960s.

"Some of the black people wanted to run for the state Assembly but didn't want their picture on their posters because they figured that once white people saw that they were black, they would lose.

"I took my picture, and I put it on that poster and I slapped it all over the place. I said, 'Hell, if you're going to run, let them know who you are.' "

Neal lost. He also lost two years later when he ran for Senate. And he lost again in a 1970 Assembly bid.

Finally, in 1972, he was elected to the Nevada Senate. He has kept his seat ever since, and he is running for re-election this year.

Legislative work

In his 28 years in public office, Neal has served on every Senate committee and been a chairman of the Human Resources and Natural Resources committees. In 1991, he was Senate president pro-tem, and in that position served briefly as acting governor.

The first piece of successful legislation he sponsored restored the rights of felons after they had accumulated 10 years of lawfulness.

When asked for some other notable examples of his legislation, Neal said, "Ever been in a Vegas hotel room? That sprinkler in there -- that's my law, too."

But his colleagues say the value of Neal's legislative service isn't measured by laws he got added to the books.

"He doesn't have a lot of legislation to introduce," Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas, said. "He is a master -- the master -- of the legislative rules, and he is the conscience on racial issues in the Senate and -- he knows where all the bodies in the state are buried."

Neal says his strength is his tenacity and ability to raise the public conscience on issues such as discrimination.

"I've lost on issues time and time again. But I keep coming back, and I get heard. My influence has been enhanced a bit because they know that I won't let things rest."

He's created a number of controversies -- from threatening to "close down the Las Vegas Strip" if the state didn't reinstate a contract with a westside medical clinic in 1976, to accusing Mormon police officers of routinely abusing blacks in 1992.

And he has locked horns with many lawmakers -- from Republican Gov. Kenny Guinn to Democratic Gov. Bob Miller, no one is off-limits.

Titus and Neal -- who consider themselves allies -- also have been at odds on occasion.

"When I first met him -- when I was first elected in 1988 -- I found him intimidating. He was very knowledgeable and very powerful and a bit gruff," Titus said.

But it was when Titus later was chosen over Neal by the Democrats to be minority leader that the two had a longer-lasting divide.

"I think he took that hard. I think he was really hurt by that. He had of course been there longer, but I had by far the most support," she said.

If his own party sometimes snubs him, Neal has had far better luck getting support from his constituents, who have lauded him as a "Robin Hood" and elected him seven consecutive times.

"He does have what appears to be a safe seat. He is extremely well liked there," said Titus, who noted that his voting record reflects the specific concerns of his community.

"For example, he sees his constituency as being victims of tough-on-crime bills," said Titus of Neal's district of lower- to middle-income voters.

Neal is admittedly wary of the state's police power -- he was once cited by police for impeding traffic when he stopped to observe an arrest.

In 1983, he unsuccessfully demanded that Clark County Sheriff John Moran apologize for the alleged rough tactics police used while raiding Las Vegas taverns during a heroin sweep.

"And they've never gotten me to support capital punishment. I never did think the state could adequately police the killing of a human being," Neal said.

Over the years, his district's demographics have shifted from almost 90 percent black to a more racially diverse group. And, although he is widely respected as one of the state's strongest civil rights leaders, some of his colleagues say Neal's racial politics are due for a change as well.

"I've known Joe Neal since before I became a legislator," Sen. Maurice Washington, R-Sparks, one of five black legislators in Nevada, said. "He was a senator when I was in high school in Las Vegas. I'd see him around, and I always held him in high esteem because he had accomplished something by being a black lawmaker. He was a person I could look up to.

"But we come out of two different generations. He comes out of the civil rights movement, and I come out of a generation that is a beneficiary of that. Times have changed, and our politics need to change.

"He looks at himself as being victimized, and I'm tired of being a victim. He'd never admit that, but his understanding of his politics is him-against-the-rest."

Personal life

Neal's colleagues say he is not a frequent face at political schmooze-fests and rarely shares dinner tables with lobbyists.

He is known by name, however, by most who swing open the door at Sugar Babe's, the tiny cafe on an obscure corner in North Las Vegas -- a quick drive from the house he has lived in since 1967.

"My children were born at that house, my wife died there, I'll probably die there," Neal said.

Neal's late wife, Estelle, was very active at St. James Catholic Church -- where Neal still attends mass -- before she died in 1997.

He met her while attending Southern University. She worked in the library; he was a frequent visitor.

"I believe it was love at first sight," he recalls. "And then we got to talking, and it blossomed into a lasting relationship."

The couple married in 1965 and, over the course of their 32-year marriage, had five children -- four daughters and one son.

Estelle died of breast cancer in 1997.

"That was the most troubling period of my life. I tried to run for governor to occupy my time, but I still found myself at home shedding tears. I grieved and grieved.

"She was my best friend. I will not marry again." Gaming industry

Neal's career antagonism of the establishment is nowhere more evident than in his long relationship with the gaming industry.

He drove a truck that delivered ice blocks to the casinos on the Strip in 1954. In the early 1960s, he belonged to the Culinary Union, and throughout his career he has stood with the union against casino management.

In 1997 he proposed an unsuccessful 2 percent increase in the gaming tax. In 1998, he proposed unsuccessful legislation that would have prevented casinos from contributing to political candidates -- 10 days after losing the Democratic gubernatorial bid to then-Las Vegas Mayor Jan Laverty Jones.

Jones had received large contributions from gaming; Neal was not supported by the industry.

"Gaming should no longer have a voice in the political process," Neal said in 1998.

Some of his critics have said he would accomplish more for his constituents, many of whom are employed in low-end casino jobs, by developing a relationship with gaming.

But gaming lobbyist Sloan said he thinks Neal's current tax initiative is driven by his "hurt feelings" from the gubernatorial race.

"He still has some antipathy toward gaming because they didn't support his gubernatorial campaign nor answer -- to his satisfaction -- his attempt to raise taxes on the industry last session," Sloan said.

The state -- which has no corporate income tax -- would be better served to expand its tax base rather than narrow it, Sloan said.

"At this point, no one is negotiating with him. He has made himself irrelevant to the policy that is going to be set in the future," Sloan said.

Neal denies any personal motivation for his tax initiative and says instead that the industry's sometimes low-paying jobs create a need for government social services, and therefore, the industry should be paying more taxes.

"This initiative is the only assurance we have of getting anything done," Neal says. "We tried the Legislature. We tried negotiating. They had their chance.

"I'm not backing off. They may think, 'If it's Joe Neal, we can beat him.' But they've got the fight they asked for."

Alan Feldman, vice president of public affairs at Mirage Resorts, says that Neal's proposal is rooted in "devastatingly twisted logic."

"Speaking with Joe is a little like trying to capture a wave on the sand. He talks in circles," Feldman said.

The industry has said a 5 percent tax increase would cause worker layoffs. Still, D. Taylor, Culinary Workers Local No. 226 staff director, said the union supports Neal even if it does not support his initiative.

"We have the utmost respect for Sen. Neal," Taylor said. "He's been a diehard supporter. I know him as a longtime advocate of people who sometimes get overlooked. He has some very strong ideas and values, and that's refreshing in this day and age."

Stacy J. Willis is a Sun reporter. She can be reached at (702) 259-4011 or by e-mail at willis@lasvegassun.com

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