Columnist Jon Ralston: Missed opportunity for gaming

Sunday, June 11, 2000 | 9:47 a.m.

Jon Ralston, who publishes the Ralston Report, writes a column for the Sun on Sundays and Wednesdays. Ralston can be reached at 870-7997 or by e-mail at ralston@vegas.com

EMPTYING OUT the political notebook on a trio of subjects:

* Image is everything: It may be a fitting message from the former mayor whose public dynamism transformed the perception of the mayoralty.

But on the eve of this week's NCAA betting ban hearing in the House, Jan Jones, now a Harrah's Entertainment executive, says the gaming industry has been woefully negligent in trying to position itself.

Jones believes that the resorts have failed to tell the other side of gaming's story, the one without the problem gamblers and economic sinkholes. The story of jobs, entertainment and destination resorts.

She doesn't blame American Gaming Association boss Frank Fahrenkopf, who she says has done well playing the inside Capitol Hill game. But she says the industry and the AGA need to concentrate more on remaking the gamers' image in the face of continual congressional assaults, lest the ramparts be breached eventually by this sports betting ban or some other piercing legislation.

There are those who say trying to change the industry's image is quixotic at best and probably futile. But Jones insists she is working on plans to help create a campaign to re-position the industry the way that drug companies have tried to do under the threat of congressional action.

Then again, Jones also believes that her company's investments in California tribal gaming, as well as those of others, will have absolutely no effect on the state economy.

She made all of these comments, by the way, on Las Vegas ONE's new show called "The Ralston Report," which you can see today at 9 a.m. and 7 p.m. (forget "60 Minutes," this is THE Sunday night show).

* The best of friends: If you think Sens. Harry Reid and Richard Bryan are as close as two Democrats from the same state who have been colleagues for three decades could be, well, it ain't necessarily so.

A perfect example this week was when Bryan's office called the media Thursday to let outlets know that a Test Site worker compensation amendment had been adopted -- a longtime Bryan cause. A release from Reid followed soon afterward crowing about the amendment's adoption.

Bryan's press notifications surely irked Reid's folks considering that the senior senator had been working on the amendment during the recess while Bryan was in Russia. The amendment that was adopted, it turns out, actually was Reid's -- he authored the language and lobbied key senators. This is par for the course between these two warring staffs and senators.

But Reid's folks were magnanimous this time. As one Reidite put it, wryly referring to Bryan's incipient retirement, "Since they are up for re-election, I guess we'll cut them some slack."

* One up and one down? One week does not a trend make. But could the Clark County Commission, which has been reviled and ridiculed for some time, be moving up while the City Council, boosted by the energy and enthusiasm of Mayor Oscar Goodman, be headed downward?

If they were stocks, the commission would be a bull and the council a bear. Why? The council's flopped around on that federal lobbying contract, which involved juice-peddling by all three applicants and timorousness by the members. By contrast, the commission did what few boards or politicians ever do: Admit a mistake.

The panel repealed that anti-Wal-Mart ordinance, for which it deserves credit. And even though Commissioner Erin Kenny's face-saving neighborhood protection ordinance was drenched by developers, at least they did something meriting praise. The council will have to live with a decision that was the product of outside influences and internal tit for tats. The commission will be able to say it responded to a public outcry after genuflecting to labor last year.

Can we expect the trend to continue? Keep hope alive.