Columnist Jon Ralston: Mack often has been his own worst enemy

Wednesday, Aug. 22, 2001 | 9:30 a.m.

Jon Ralston hosts the public affairs program "Face to Face" on Las Vegas ONE and also publishes the Ralston Report. His column for the Sun appears on Sundays and Wednesdays. Ralston can be reached at 870-7997 or through e-mail at ralston@vegas.com

ON THE LAS VEGAS political blotter, Michael Mack's name stands out these days. The major unresolved question, though, is whether he is guilty of a felony or a misdemeanor.

In these cases of political blunders, sometimes the crime itself is made worse by the handling. But sometimes the transgression stands on its own and can neither be mitigated or exacerbated by spin or rhetoric.

After a week in which he disclosed more than $3 million in debt and had to amend a campaign form to acknowledge receipt of two vehicles from a car dealer who loaned him money, Mack remains in political purgatory, with the inferno looming below and no apparent angels in waiting.

It's hard to tell just how serious this is because Mack has wagged his tongue like a knife, pricking himself so many times he could hemorrhage beyond help. Unlike his colleague, Michael McDonald, who recently had his name erased from the blotter, Mack did not acknowledge the facts but, as McDonald did, refused to submit to any rational interpretation of them -- i.e., he was advocating for his boss.

No, instead, Mack has employed a combination of timely amnesia and horrific judgment to generate even more suspicion than he did when he suddenly disclosed he had taken a $60,000 loan from Joe Scala -- after he had helped quash a potential competitor. And so now he has become the victim of several familiar syndromes as his self-inflicted wounds multiply. The most obvious is The Everything Seems Sinister Syndrome.

Whenever a politician gets into trouble, everything that is beneath the surface threatens to float, no matter what its weight may be. Enemies whisper sweet somethings and sweet nothings in reporters' ears to keep the politician squirming. Mack has made this usual environment even more noxious by seeming evasive and mysterious about various loans and relationships.

For instance, Mack has said that he solicited prominent businessmen Billy Walters and Michael Gaughan to invest in his business, even though they come before the city. (This is the same issue, by the way, that eventually proved the undoing of former Councilman Frank Hawkins, who asked city favor-seekers to invest in a golf tournament.)

Mack said he could provide dates and documents for those solicitations to Walters and Gaughan. But on Tuesday, he said he had no records to produce and could not recall the dates. Did he agree too quickly when he promised to reveal more details? Or has he now conveniently suffered another lapse of memory? He has created the atmosphere for such questions to be relevant.

Last week's disclosure that Mack had accepted two Suburbans from Scala during his campaign -- but failed to report them -- added to a picture of a relationship between the two that seemed closer and even murkier. But it turns out that this all may have been a miscommunication with Scala's company, Courtesy, his campaign staffers and his campaign accountant -- and Lawrence Weekly had the identical problem.

But it still doesn't smell right, especially because the question looms of why Scala called Mack's campaign and eagerly agreed to supply cars to take voters to the polls. Mack acts like Pontius Pilate on this, saying he was far removed from the campaign finances and reporting.

But once again, his behavior allows questions to be asked: Is this the mark of a guy who spends too much time, to use his phrase, in La-La land? Or, worse, is this a sign of amorality from a man who, in his own words, indicated he would take money for his campaign from anyone?

There are other syndromes, too, afflicting Mack. The Leper Syndrome -- friends won't return calls, other pols won't come to his events. Anyone else notice that Larry Brown has gone from having his arm around Mack to keeping him at arm's length? And The Chinese Water Torture Syndrome -- the drip-drip-drip of headlines that eventually drowns any chance for recovery.

Mack still has dates with ethics panels and judges in the near future -- and a document expected to be filed today with the city ethics panel accuses Mack of everything except being on the grassy knoll. But he can take heart that he also has one syndrome that may be a tonic for his transgressions, one he shares with his colleague McDonald. It's called The Get Well Syndrome -- if he survives the ethics and legal process, he has until Campaign '05 to get well.