Nevada’s political universe

By J. Patrick Coolican

Friday, May 12, 2006 | 7:20 a.m.

Let's play six degrees of Oscar Goodman.

We'll start with an easy one - Sig Rogich. As a prominent Republican political consultant, he's everywhere. Sig is an old friend of Manny Cortez, who once was chairman of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, whose advertising firm is R&R Partners, which Sig once owned. Sig is helping out Manny's daughter, Catherine Cortez Masto, in her race for attorney general. (She's a Democrat, but around here, that doesn't matter.) Also working for Cortez Masto is Jim Ferrence, a political consultant who has run Oscar Goodman's campaigns.

See how easy that was?

Nevada politics is "perfectly understandable if you understand Kevin Bacon," said Michael Green, a Nevada historian, referring to the parlor game "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon," in which the players try to connect Hollywood figures through the prolific character actor.

A college commencement speaker once advised graduates that life isn't like college; it's like high school. In Nevada politics, that's often literally true, as the most important influencers in town - the developers, politicians, lobbyists and consultants - often grew up together and make up a small clique of power.

Those relationships often help in the public arena by muting partisanship and fostering a spirit of cooperation and problem-solving, say people inside the Nevada hive, as well as observers outside of it. That problem-solving, in turn, keeps Nevada moving forward.

But the smallness of the circle also limits the range of candidates and ideas and contributes to a perception by the public - true or not - that the fix is in, that political participation is a pointless endeavor because a small coterie of men, and a few women, are making all the decisions in some backroom deal.

"The close relationships we're talking about promote the idea of a smoke-filled room, both in politics and policy," Green said. "Or at least, that can be the perception."

The tight web of influence is the result of Nevada's history as a small state with a single, dominant industry, and a defensive attitude toward the federal government and other meddling outsiders. Although the state is now rapidly becoming a larger, more heterogeneous and complex place - both politically and economically - Nevada was tiny not long ago, which contributes to the small-town feel of the state's politics, local observers say.

Ralph Denton, a Las Vegas attorney and historian, says he remembers as a young man before World War II driving with his family to Las Vegas. His father knew the man working at the service station when they stopped for gas. Later, in Reno, his father knew the people working at the hotel where they stayed. In fact, his father seemed to know everyone in the state, Denton said.

That's probably because Nevada's population was 91,000 in 1930; 110,000 in 1940.

Even though the state has grown quickly in recent decades, many of the newcomers are not engaged in politics, David Damore, a UNLV political scientist, said. As a result, the pool of candidates and activists hasn't grown as much as it should have, he said.

Green pointed to the state's long history of us-against-the-world-ism as another reason for its cohesive circle of insiders. Nevada has long been a state with a contrarian legal system (think divorce, gambling and prostitution) and a huge federal presence - military bases, Nevada Test Site, nuclear dumps and land, land, land. That has united Nevadans against federal meddling and for federal booty.

"In the late 19th century, the federal government eliminated silver as currency, and people here thought it was a plan to 'get Nevada.' Sound familiar?" Green asked, slyly referring to the fracas about storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain.

Having one dominant industry also tends to create political consensus, Green said. As the saying goes, there aren't two parties in Nevada; there's only one - the Gaming Party.

The tight unity of Nevada's political family and its easy consensus aren't such a bad thing, say the insiders.

"It's one of the great elements of living here, that it's a small town, and you get that sense in relationships and working with people and sharing common values," said Greg Ferraro, a Reno-based lobbyist, formerly of R&R Partners. Ferraro was a fraternity brother of another R&R principal, Pete Ernaut, who was chief of staff for Gov. Kenny Guinn, whose press secretary was Greg Bortolin, who until recently worked for Henderson mayor and gubernatorial candidate Jim Gibson, whose father - oh, never mind.

"We have a rich history of people coming together and solving problems and keeping partisan rhetoric to the side," Ferraro said. As examples of bipartisanship furthered by the state's small-town politics, Ferraro cited the swift response to the terrorist attacks, which threatened to cripple the tourism industry, as well as a large tax hike in 2003 to keep up with ongoing growth.

"Getting potholes fixed is less of a partisan issue than, say, the war in Iraq," Green said.

Former U.S. Sen. Richard Bryan agreed. "We're in the desert, OK, we need an airport, so let's do it," he said, offering an example of many infrastructure challenges the state has tackled in what he called a "can-do spirit." (Bryan, who served with fellow Democratic Sen. Harry Reid, is now a partner with Reid's son, Clark County Commission Chairman Rory Reid, at the law firm Lionel Sawyer & Collins. Oh, and Bryan, though a bit reticent about it now, was once a law partner of Goodman.)

Ernaut said the tight network not only dulls partisan edges, but also creates a self-policing mechanism, wherein certain lines don't get crossed for fear of ostracism.

"You'll notice that you won't read about the guys at the top of the game involved in the current scandals," he said, referring to the corruption trial of former Clark County commissioners. (Ernaut works at R&R for Billy Vassiliadis, who bought the firm from Rogich.)

The small network is built on a foundation of trust, Ernaut said. That trust solves what game theorists call the "prisoner's dilemma," said Matthew Dull, a political theorist and former Brookings Institution fellow. "The two of us knock over a bank. We have an explicit agreement not to rat each other out.

"The dilemma is that they separate us, and both of us have a choice about being true to our agreement," Dull continued. "If we're both true to each other, that's the best case because they have no evidence. But can I trust the other guy? If one of us goes south, that one gets off easier, but the other guy gets screwed."

Dull used another example of a common grazing area. "We all try to graze one more cow. How do you solve that? Repeated interactions. You build a reputation for good behavior. Go along to get along. It's important in politics. You're signaling your reliability.

"So this close-knit community can build a lot of trust, so even though they're strategic actors and might screw each other, they know long term the costs of doing so are much higher than whatever short-term gains they could achieve."

This trust system has a downside in the eyes of some observers - a clubby resistance to risky politics, policies and candidates. "When you have an informally institutionalized process, you have stagnation," said Gary Gray, a Democratic political consultant.

"New people rise within it, but it's within the institutional boundaries, and we tend not to explore new ideas or concepts, because we're comfortable with the old ones," said Gray, who has run campaigns for Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., as well as the likely next Assembly speaker, Barbara Buckley.

Gray's wife, by the way, is Assemblywoman Chris Giunchigliani, who's running for a County Commission seat against Myrna Williams. Williams' campaign consultants include Mike Slanker, who also works for Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., who served on the Boulder City Council with Bob Ferraro, Greg's dad and current mayor of Boulder City. Williams' campaign is also getting help from Ferrence, who ran campaigns for former Las Vegas Councilman Michael McDonald, old friend of former strip club tycoon Mike Galardi.

Gray noted that there's nothing pernicious going on, no secret meetings in cherry wood-lined conference rooms, and that it's not a club that excludes new members. He cites relative newcomers Slanker and Billy Rogers, another consultant. (Rogers worked for North Las Vegas Mayor Mike Montandon, who sits on the LVCVA board with Gibson, County Commissioner Yvonne Atkinson Gates, Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce President Kara Kelley and - Goodman. Just to review: LVCVA's advertising firm? All together now - R&R Partners.)

Although the power-elites welcome newcomers, "they've institutionalized politics, who they get behind, who runs those campaigns, who runs for office, who donates to them, in a loose-knit way," Gray said. "These are people who socialize together, and they do business together, so they tend to go with the familiar, with the status quo."

This has had an impact on policy, Gray said. "Some of the problems of growth occurred because it was simply business as usual with no one looking down the road," he said, citing traffic, air and other problems.

"Ironically, the same people bulldozing all the affordable housing are saying, 'Where are we going to put all our workers?' "

A limited vision, or group think, can be a problem for tight networks, Dull said.

The other problem with the smallness of Nevada politics is the perception among residents that they have no power to create change. "People get cynical about the process, and they give up, and then it's self-reinforcing," Green said. In other words, with few people participating and voting, power remains in a few hands, which turns people off, and the cycle continues.

"I'm still naive enough to think that what happens on Election Day is what matters. But it promotes the perception that there's five people getting together and deciding things," Green said.

Finally, one more: Oscar Goodman was in "Casino" with Robert De Niro, who was in "Sleepers" with Kevin Bacon.