Circus Circus set fund-raising record

Monday, Oct. 9, 2000 | 11:27 a.m.

Editor's note: This is the first in a series of six excerpts from the new book, "The Anointed One," by Sun political columnist Jon Ralston. This series, exclusive to the Sun, will run daily through Friday.

By the end of 1996, Sig Rogich had recruited all the best campaign talent in the state to help gubernatorial hopeful Kenny Guinn. The next task: Locking up the money. Or at least making everyone think he had.

In late November 1996 Clyde Turner, chairman of Circus Circus Enterprises, picked up the phone in his Las Vegas Strip office. On the other end of the line was Sig Rogich, a friend from the old days who had hired Turner, when he was a CPA, as his personal accountant. New campaign spending limits were going into effect in just a few days, he told Turner, which would prohibit corporations from giving any candidate more than $10,000, as opposed to the old ceiling of $20,000. Would Turner consider maxing out to gubernatorial candidate Kenny Guinn for each of Circus Circus' corporate entities?

Wasn't that unusual? Turner asked his friend. Not at all, Rogich replied; in fact, companies had done the same thing in the past for then-Gov. Bob Miller. Indeed, the current governor had received six-figure contributions from major gaming companies, bundling money from various affiliates. But Rogich was asking Turner for a heretofore unprecedented outpouring of cash support, double anything that had come before. I'll get back to you, Turner told Rogich.

Turner had been chairman of the giant casino corporation for about two years but had never been active in campaign contributions. He called in the company's political expert, Mike Sloan, and asked him if the donations would be illegal. Sloan feared such a large amount would bring unwanted attention to the company, but he assured Turner they were breaking no laws.

Turner called Rogich and told him that he was authorizing every corporate affiliate to give $20,000 to Guinn, who had never before run for office. Fifteen Circus Circus outlets -- the company had properties in Laughlin, Reno, and Jean, as well as Las Vegas -- would give the maximum donation; the total would be $300,000, the largest contribution ever reported by one company in Nevada political history. (It's hard to know what happened in the mob days when some contributions were alleged to have been delivered in cash.) Nearly two years loomed until the election, and no Democrat had even announced a candidacy yet. *

For most of 1996, Rogich and Guinn didn't collect a penny for the governor's race. Guinn was busy traveling the state, trying to lock up rural support per Rogich's strategy. At the same time, Rogich was trying to create a statewide network, an unassailable wall of support from elected officials in all areas of Nevada. He had one person in his office calling every elected Republican in the state to try to get them to sign on, and he was helping to fuel media reports that Guinn had seven figures in commitments. Putting the word out was designed to induce politicians, who would want to be with a winner, to sign on. Rogich and Guinn tried to close the deal fast -- after the phone call, they sent a follow-up letter asking if it was OK to use the politician's name in campaign materials.

By the time November 1996 rolled around, Guinn had met plenty of new people, from Jackpot to Pahrump. But he had hardly anything in the bank, even though Rogich's spinning through the media made it sound as if he had a bulging war chest. Though Las Vegas Sun columnist Jeff German wrote in a Nov. 9 piece that Guinn already has more than $1 million in cash and commitments, the candidate's coffers were hardly well-stocked. Dates of contributions that were later reported on his disclosure reports showed that Guinn had collected only $92,000 before the election in 1996. So he didn't even have six figures in hand, much less seven.

(That November, a ballot question passed that lowered the campaign contribution threshold from $20,000 to $10,000. Secretary of State Dean Heller set down a short window before the new ceiling took effect.)

Heller's ruling that contributions would be limited, as of Nov. 30, to $10,000 per corporation came down on Nov. 25. The Guinnites had five days.

The next day, according to a campaign disclosure report Guinn filed later, Circus Circus and its affiliates wrote those 15 checks totaling $300,000. Four other $20,000 checks also came in on that prosperous day for the Guinn campaign -- two from Palace Station and Boulder Station, courtesy of the Fertitta family, majority shareholders in Station Casinos, a company that caters to the Las Vegas locals market. Combined with $40,000 received a month earlier from companies run by the patriarch, Frank Fertitta Jr., Station Casinos had an $80,000 early investment in Guinn. That amounted to only a fraction of the Circus Circus wager, but that was only the beginning for Station Casinos, which would become Guinn's second-largest contributor. One other Station affiliate, Southwest Gaming, gave $10,000, bringing the company's Nov. 26 total to $50,000.

The other $40,000 was from two companies linked to Gary Primm, the man behind Primadonna Resorts, which has three casinos in Primm, on the California-Nevada border and named for his family. (Gary Primm also partnered up with MGM Grand to erect the New York-New York megaresort on the Strip.) Primm, not coincidentally, is a friend of Rogich, who at the time sat on the Primadonna board.

So Nov. 26, 1996, turned out to be a pivotal day for the Guinn campaign, perhaps the largest successful fundraising day in state history. Guinn raked in $390,000, which provided a solid financial foundation for his gubernatorial campaign.

Two other $20,000 contributions not withdrawn from casino vaults arrived at Guinn Central in November, even before the Circus Circus and Station money.

Two days after the 1996 balloting had concluded, two companies tied to a man named Billy Walters contributed the maximum amount to Guinn. Walters, a gambler and golf-course developer, was in the process of becoming one of the largest campaign contributors in Nevada. Walters frequently came before local governments for zoning approvals, and he was looking for as much goodwill as he could buy from the political system. At the time, he was also under threat of indictment for his sports-betting activities, which authorities continually alleged violated an obscure part of the criminal code.

Indeed, Walters later became the source of a brouhaha in the campaign, when The New York Times ran a piece about him. Though a Guinn aide defended Walters in the Times story, the campaign nevertheless returned what by then had amounted to a $50,000 contribution from the gambler's companies. Much later, however, Walters, who would be indicted three times for the same allegations, quietly reinvested the returned contributions in Guinn.

Despite the winter of his contented fund-raising exploits, by the end of 1996, Guinn had not reached the seven-figure mark that Rogich repeatedly claimed they'd eclipsed.

Records show that in contributions of more than $500, the campaign had amassed $597,000, with more than 70 percent of it raised on that one day, Nov. 26. Of the all the money the Guinn campaign reported raising during that first year, the gaming industry accounted for more than 70 percent of the total.

Four companies -- Circus Circus, Station Casinos, the Frontier, and Primadonna -- combined for $420,000 out of the $597,000 Guinn raised in 1996. Add in $5,000 from Reno casino pioneer Warren Nelson, and the total came to $425,000.

That amount was nowhere near what Rogich was telling people, but it was still impressive, considering Guinn had never before run for office and there were more than 700 days until the election. Nearly $600,000 wasn't bad seed money, and more fertile ground awaited to be plowed along Las Vegas Boulevard.

Noticeably absent from this list was the state's most visible gaming executive, Steve Wynn. As Wynn goes, so goes the casino industry, or so the conventional wisdom went. But not only is that not often true -- Wynn is much more of a maverick and polarizing force in the industry than people realize -- but he was not getting on board the S.S. Guinn with two years to go for several reasons.

First, Wynn, and even more so his wife Elaine, were not thrilled with Guinn's performance as interim president of UNLV. But Wynn's initial reluctance to write a check went beyond the rubble of the local basketball program. Unlike previous contenders, especially Bob Miller, Wynn thought, Guinn had no track record in public office that merited such a large and exclusive commitment.

Besides, the Wynns were fond of both Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa and Las Vegas Mayor Jan Jones. They had plenty of time to decide where to put their stamp of approval -- and their money. The proverbial eternity loomed before the election when Guinn would be on the ballot.

The Anointed One, by Jon Ralston is available for $17.95 from all major bookstores in the greater Las Vegas area; it's also available directly from the Las Vegas-based publisher, Huntington Press, at 252-0655.

TUESDAY: The Short, Unhappy Candidacy of Frankie Sue Del Papa.

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