Columnist Jon Ralston: Mack’s troubles are likely to get much worse

Wednesday, July 11, 2001 | 9:24 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

UNLOADING THE political notebook for a mid-week potpourri:

First, Michael Mack, who appears ready to resurface soon, has displayed the public relations savvy here of Gary Condit. His disappearing act without explanation is as if he left his previously unvarnished political reputation in a pawn shop with hopes of redeeming it later.

As Mack the Pawnbroker already knows and should have told Mack the Politician, that rarely happens. And taking a huge loan from someone (car dealer Joe Scala) who has business before the city has to rank up there with the kind of high-risk financial transaction that no one in Mack's business would ever countenance.

Second, Tony Sgro, the attorney suing Mack and Larry Brown, among others, was furious after last week's hearing on the denied car dealership for his client, John Staluppi, that started this controversy. He is apparently furious at Brown for what he believes was an implication that he is ignorant and lazy, so he plans to show everyone he is neither. He has hired a former Treasury Department private eye to sniff around City Hall and the councilmen's financial dealings. An IRS guy doing a proctological exam of your money?

Methinks this doesn't bode well.

Third, the blood-in-the-water phenomenon has begun in earnest. And with all the stuff rising to the surface -- insidious and so-far unrpoven implications that Brown inserted himself as a "door-opener" (that's his employer's phrase) into negotiations on the downtown land that affected his employer (just as Michael McDonald did in Sportsparkgate for his boss) and all manner of outlandish rumors about Mack's finances -- Metro naturally has begun to get interested. And if either councilman has any political enemies -- can you think of anyone, Councilman McDonald? -- they will be sure that this lasts a long time.

All that's left is to give the new imbroglio a name. Loangate? Pawngate? Those work, so long as Mack is the only one involved.

IGT folks have told anyone who wants to know that they don't fear any hurdles from federal or state regulators. The merged company will control an estimated 60 percent of the market and reduces the number of U.S. slot manufacturers from six to five.

I wonder how nervous this kind of consolidation makes the Strip giants, who just a couple of sessions ago were exerting their legislative power over the slot companies by using state lawmakers to solve a contract dispute.

Fund-raisers already are starting for next year's elections, including some legislative ones of note.

First, state Sen. Mark James will make it official -- that he's running for re-election and not attorney general -- when he has an event on July 31 hosted by the ubiquitous lobbyist John Pappageorge. Pappageorge, I believe, was actually the ghost writer of Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People."

Pappageorge, by no small coincidence, also will host an event for James' fellow Republican, Mark Amodei, a Carson Cityite who evidently is hoping to raise his statewide profile. Amodei is one of the brighter stars in the GOP elected firmament and surely will be in leadership someday if he sticks around the capital.