John Katsilometes on the circuitous route one Hilarie took to the campaign of another Hillary

Tuesday, March 20, 2007 | 7:11 a.m.

In 1992 Hilarie Grey worked as a volunteer in the San Fernando, Calif., headquarters of the Bill Clinton/Al Gore presidential campaign.

Naturally, that position led her to Las Vegas.

At the time, Grey, who grew up in the Los Angeles area, had just graduated from UC San Diego. One of her fellow volunteers was a professor and urban planner, Arnold Stalk. A few months after working on the campaign, Stalk moved to Las Vegas to take a job with the city government, where he would develop the plan for MASH Village, the now-defunct Las Vegas homeless services provider. Stalk encouraged Grey to apply for the position as development officer for the city, which she sought and got.

Fifteen years later Grey is the Nevada communications director of Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

"It has gone full circle for me in Las Vegas," she said Monday, the start of her second week with the Clinton campaign. Grey isn't one to seek media attention but has been around the press since she arrived in Las Vegas, having worked as public information officer of McCarran International Airport and for former UNLV President Carol Harter and state Sen. Dina Titus during her gubernatorial run.

And of her coincidental first name, Grey says that as long as the respective spellings aren't confused, she is fine.

NoteMart

Stumped by the obvious, on Saturday CBS missed a chance to tie in UNLV's NCAA tournament game against Wisconsin with music by an authentic Las Vegas band. The cut-away music the network used after its halftime report was Franz Ferdinand's "Do You Want To." Anything by the Killers, especially "All the Things That I Have Done," would have been a more inspired choice. ...

Noted on the official Web site for the Downtown Cocktail Room in the burgeoning "Fremont East" district is a list of entertainment options for private events: They are, "DJ, Live Percussionist, Impersonators, Models, Live Band, Contortionists, Dancers, Little People." My kind of conga line ...

Relentless multimedia personality Wayne Allyn Root has merged his company, WinningEdge, the nation's only publicly traded sports handicapping company, with ProGames Network, a subsidiary of MobilePro Corp., a $100 million-per-year cell phone company. Root, author of the book, "Millionaire Republican," and a cable chat-show staple, stands to make out quite nicely on the deal. ...

On our menus: Nerve Ana, the '90s-themed club at Polly Esther's offers the cocktail "Ricky Martin Not Straight ... Up." ...

No relation: The International Pizza Expo begins today and runs through Thursday at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Flipping the dough and nipping the sauce be Kathy Lyons of Georgetown, Ky., owner of Fat Kats Extreme Pizza. Her pizza was named Best Pizza in the Midwest by the trade magazine Pizza Today (but not pizza every day, or you will be indeed be a fat Kats). ...

Hint: The owner is in this column: Plate on a silver Infinity, HLARIUS.

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