Sunday, March 12, 2000 | 8:56 a.m.
Jon Ralston, who publishes the Ralston Report, writes a column for the Sun Sundays and Wednesdays. Ralston can be reached at 870-7997 or by e-mail at [email protected].
When he was elected to the Las Vegas City Council in 1995, Michael McDonald's campaign was simple: I'm not Frank Hawkins.
Turned out almost anyone with a pulse could have defeated Hawkins, an amazingly effective inside player who was crippled by allegations of unethical behavior. But McDonald also was the perfect contrast: A clean-cut, almost painfully polite cop, a picture of rectitude.
Five years later Michael McDonald has become Frank Hawkins. Like his predecessor, McDonald has proven himself to be a preternaturally savvy operator inside City Hall. Like Hawkins, he not only was perceived as a shadow mayor but as the person to go to -- both to fix a pothole or to Count to Three (now Four). But like Hawkins, McDonald has been hobbled by an ethics pounding. His relationships with Silver State Disposal have caused him most of his distress and are the subject of a pending ethics panel hearing. But McDonald's new job has the potential to make him even more like Hawkins, who lost after he sought money from those who came before him as a councilman.
McDonald recently was hired by Las Vegas Color Graphics as vice president of corporate development. The councilman's previous forays into business -- a private investigator's company and a proposed limousine service -- have not been fruitful. Hawkins, too, had business problems, which eventually led him to an ill-fated venture, a for-profit golf tournament, which solicited many of the same folks who were city supplicants.
The media environment enveloping McDonald has become so poisonous that almost every move he makes will activate olfactories sniffing for something noxious in the air. So does something smell funny here? Let's take a whiff:
McDonald and Larry Scheffler, the ex-Henderson councilman who runs the company, consummated the deal a few weeks ago at -- where else? -- Mandalay Bay's Foundation Room. The nifty job title means that McDonald's charge is to go out and solicit business. So what qualifies the ex-cop for such a task? McDonald mentions that he worked briefly in marketing at the Alexis Park Hotel; Scheffler says he was looking for someone who is "young and aggressive."
The potential problem is that McDonald could have his hand out to people who later will have their hands out to him in his elected role. McDonald says he will be on the lookout for conflicts and that most of his entreaties will come in the county or out of state. But is he asking for trouble, just as other local elective types are, by taking jobs where his business is client development?
With every McDonald story, it seems, there is some tie to Silver State, the garbage company whose executives McDonald has been known to consort with in places such as the Foundation Room. This one is no different, although the tie is more interesting than damning. Turns out Scheffler merged his company last year with PrintSource USA, which is based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and run by two men named Craig Farlie and Michael Carpenter.
Farlie and Carpenter learned the business of selling from one of the best salesmen there is, H. Wayne Huzienga, when they worked for him at -- cue the ominous music -- Republic Industries, Silver State's Fort Lauderdale-based parent company. No, Scheffler says, no one at Republic has an interest in PrintSource. But the connection, however tenuous, is sure to be cause for the McDonald dogs to pick up the scent.
Frank Hawkins already had plenty of problems before ethics charges over his golf tournament resulted in his landslide loss to McDonald. Five years later the councilman had better hope he is following an alternate career path and that history is not repeating itself.
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