Las Vegas Sun

March 19, 2024

Goodman pleased about Obama’s Las Vegas comments

Las Vegas mayor says he doesn’t regret not attending presidential functions

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman said Friday he thinks President Obama's positive statements today about Las Vegas indicate the president has learned not to put the city in a negative light in the future.

And the mayor, who decided to send a message to Obama by not attending his public functions Thursday and today, said he was pleased by the outcome and had no regrets.

"I felt like the Lone Ranger on many occasions out there the last two or three days, but I woke up this morning with a smile on my face and I liked what I saw," Goodman told reporters during a late afternoon news conference outside the Grant Sawyer State Office Building.

Although Goodman declined to attend Obama's town hall meeting at Green Valley High School today and his speech at CityCenter's Aria Hotel & Casino to business leaders, the mayor said he heard Obama had said good things about the city.

On Friday, Obama told about 650 business leaders from the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce and the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, "Let me set the record straight: I love Vegas."

The statement drew a standing ovation.

He added: "I enjoy myself every time I've had an opportunity to visit."

His statement fell short of the full apology Goodman had been demanding the president make following Obama's Feb. 2 remark to a New Hampshire audience: "You don't blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you're trying to save for college."

Goodman indicated the president's remarks today satisfied him.

"It's presumptuous of me to ask the president of the United States to say I'm sorry. That wasn't the objective of what I was trying to accomplish," the mayor said. "I was trying to get him to straighten the record out, to assure us in future days that there won't be comments which specifically reference Las Vegas in a light which may not be in our best interests.

"I hope that that lesson has been learned. That was the purpose of the statements that I had made," Goodman said.

The mayor pointed out that an almost identical situation occurred last year, when on Feb. 9, 2009, at a town hall meeting in Elkhart, Ind., Obama said executives of failing financial institutions should use federal bailout money responsibly and that “you can’t go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayer’s dime.”

"Last year about this time, the same thing happened. He had made some comments about Las Vegas and then he came here (in May) and said nice things about Las Vegas, Goodman said. "A year later, he says things about Las Vegas we believe that that hurt us and was deleterious to our best interests and he once again says nice things about Las Vegas."

Goodman said he hoped that was the end of Obama casting Las Vegas in a negative light.

"That's the whole lesson to be learned," Goodman said. "I thought last year he learned. That's why I called him a slow learner this year. Next year, I hope we never even have to get there."

Goodman toned down his rhetoric from earlier this month, when he said that the president wasn't welcome and he would give him "the boot."

"He's always been welcome here, but welcome here under certain circumstances. And perhaps he met those circumstances today," Goodman said.

Does he regret not having a chance to talk to Obama personally?

"No. I know the president. I've talked to him personally before he was the president and I've talked to him while he was the president ... If he won't say anything bad about Las Vegas in the future and he said good things about Las Vegas in the present, that's all that I could ask for."

The mayor said that would be the end of him trying to get a formal apology from the president.

"Hopefully, it's behind us," he said. "If there aren't any incidents that raise my ire, I would love to buy him a drink this time."

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