Columnist Jon Ralston: Power elite dread raid fallout

Friday, Feb. 21, 2003 | 4:21 a.m.

Like a moment that crystallized the city's ongoing identity crisis, when that law enforcement battalion invaded Rizzolo's Crazy Horse Too Thursday morning just before dawn, the darkness of the criminal past cast a long shadow over the city's corporate present. And the long-term reverberations on the political elite, many of whom were on his campaign contribution payroll but never wanted to sully themselves with his business, will unfold as private discomfort surely metamorphoses into public hypocrisy.

Like his good friend Michael McDonald, the Las Vegas councilman who was once accused of being Rizzolo's shill, the strip joint boss looks and sounds like an extra from a Martin Scorsese picture. But looks can be deceiving, especially in a place where men who were criminals elsewhere became the pillars of society, where businessmen in more respectable enterprises act much more like thugs and where black turtlenecks don't necessarily mean there is a matching black hat.

Rizzolo, like others before him -- developer/gambler Billy Walters is a notable example -- has become respectable the old fashioned way: He bought it. Through charitable endeavors and hundreds of thousands in campaign donations, Rizzolo has consorted with the power elite, be it dining with them at Piero's or queuing up to shake hands with the president at a fund-raiser here a few years ago.

Rizzolo, like Walters, is sophisticated and cunning in how he has courted politicians. He was a little too clever when it was discovered that his sister had set up a fly-by-night church to try to block consultant Sig Rogich from converting his old office building into a topless bar. But, with McDonald's help inside City Hall, it almost worked.

Rizzolo, through a series of corporate entities including one innocuously named "The Power Company," and with family members bundling contributions, has funneled campaign money to dozens of candidates through the years. Again like Walters, he has seeded the system at every level to gain that invaluable access. Some examples:

Businessmen contribute to politicians for one of two reasons: They either want something or they want to be left alone.

Until now everyone in government has pretty much left Rizzolo alone -- unless it's time to collect campaign money, that is. And now it's possible he just might learn whether that investment in the political/judicial system will pay off.

But has what Rizzolo done in buying influence so different than any other business here? Has he been more heavy-handed than some developers, who have either designated commissioners or councilmen, or gaming executives, who think they own the city?

Mandalay Resort Group once gave $300,000 in one day to a gubernatorial candidate named Kenny Guinn, the most obscene evidence of the anointment by the Strip in its ongoing effort to control the levers of the political process. As one prominent politician once told me, "Rick Rizzolo is more honorable than most of the people I've dealt with in this business."

I have no idea whether Rizzolo has ties to the mob, even though law enforcement points to friends and employees with unsavory connections. But under that guilt by association, I know a lot of -- here comes that word again -- respectable folks who might be in trouble.

I also have little faith in the feds to bring any substantive cases against public figures here in the valley. Remember, five years ago the FBI saw, heard and spoke no evil as county commissioners doled out lucrative contracts to friends and political cronies.

What's been left mostly unsaid so far, though, is what Rizzolo might tell the authorities if he gets in a bind. He might not know where all the bodies are buried. But he has worked closely enough with enough government officials to know a few things.

How perfect it would be, too, if Rizzolo hires the personification of the bridge between old and new Las Vegas, a literal extra from a Martin Scorsese movie, the hawker of a museum honoring La Cosa Nostra, the mob lawyer become populist mayor: Oscar Goodman. His Honor has done nothing to quell the speculation, offering only vague non-denial denials.

As politicians who have lap danced for Rizzolo now think about waltzing away from him, and law enforcement tries to match the size of Thursday's raid with a momentous indictment, the shadow of the past is palpable.

And now that the darkness has become visible, we should know shortly whether paradise has been found or lost.