Columnist Jon Ralston: Mack still doesn’t get it

Friday, March 14, 2003 | 4:58 a.m.

In a story of lessons not learned, Mack, who last year almost lost his elected job because of a financial arrangement with a city suitor, now is openly asking businesses who come before him as a councilman to hire him to do public relations and advertising for them. In an almost unfathomable demonstration of his inability to be educated or chastened by his previous lapse, Mack obtusely believes that so long as he discloses and abstains after he secures the client, he has committed no transgression.

The man who once said he would not discriminate if someone wanted to contribute to his campaign -- "I'll take anyone's money. It's all green." -- now says he will wantonly pursue business from people he regulates.

"I'm going to be active in the marketing business," he said last week. "I'm going to go after them (clients)."

In the same way, that is, he solicited city-regulated businessmen to help bail him out of his hemorrhaging pawnshop, which eventually resulted in that $57,000 loan from car dealer Joe Scala that Mack initially failed to disclose and almost resulted in him being booted from his elected perch.

But this time he is being even more blatant, ham-handed and clueless, asking people who may need his vote to retain him to do work for which he is (at best) marginally qualified. The councilman is working for casinos, developers, even a new strip club that has yet to receive its final city approvals.

Mack won't reveal his entire client list, saying that the public will learn who he represents when he abstains and discloses during council meetings.

But this is the same situation that rightly once landed others in trouble with the ethics police. Clark County Commissioner Yvonne Atkinson Gates was found guilty of soliciting business from those she regulated after she asked Strip executives to invest in her daiquiri stands. Ex-Councilman Frank Hawkins once landed in front of the ethics panel for soliciting city supplicants for a for-profit golf tournament. And now Mack is, incredibly, showing that though he was once burned, he is not shy.

Just a few months after he escaped with his job, when Municipal Judge Bert Brown declined to throw him out of office for accepting that loan, Mack is engaging in conduct that any reasonable person would see as even more egregious. How did this come about?

Six months ago Mack became a consultant to a local PR company, MK Squared. Now why would that firm hire him?

"Because of my background in marketing," he said.

What background in marketing? I asked the failed pawnbroker.

"I've been involved in marketing and advertising in my businesses," Mack replied. So, a PR/advertising company hired a guy with no experience in PR and advertising because he had marketing experience as a pawnbroker?

Excuse me, as Woody Allen once famously said in "Annie Hall," I have an appointment back on the planet Earth. Could it be he was hired because of his elected position to drum up business? Perish the cynical thought.

For a while, Mack seemed to have found an ethical compass. It has become something of a ritual at City Council meetings for the councilman to interrupt the beginning of the agenda for a long-winded disclosure of his potential conflicts -- a clear reaction to his previous failure to disclose. Then a few months back he revealed that he had a contract, through MK Squared, with the Horseshoe, which, last I looked, is in downtown Las Vegas.

How could Mack solicit a casino company under his purview? Mack said last week that the Horseshoe paid him for a "two-month promotion" and that the casino "didn't have any items before us at the time." I'm serious, folks. That's what he said.

More recently, he has been working with the Davaris, the Houston-based strip club operators who purchased consultant Sig Rogich's old office building and are converting it into a topless club. Mack was vague when I asked him about that deal. He could (or would) not tell me when the negotiations with the Davaris began or any details, yet he said he was sure he had not voted on any items during his business dealings with them. The strip club had an item on the council agenda last meeting -- Mack did not disclose his involvement and the item was postponed.

Who knows what other city-regulated businesses, which by definition are under his thumb, Mack is calling to seek PR or advertising contracts. But his declaration of aggressiveness means there surely are many more and that he is once again headed for the ethics stocks.

Mack probably would have lost his job already if not for the inestimable legal skills of his attorney, Rick Wright. Considering the councilman's current conduct is much worse, my advice to him would be to hold onto Wright's phone number.

Actually, what Mack needs to do is decide whether he wants to be an elected official or whether he wants to make money off of city businesses. It would seem an easy choice. Although his success in business is not stellar, his chances of achieving much in the elective realm, to hearken back to Loehrer's memorable phrase, are null and void.