Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

JOHN L. SMITH: Prohibition-era mayors make Oscar look like small potatoes

Mayor Oscar Goodman is drunk with joy these days as he plays host to the party of the Las Vegas century.

Whether grinning in downtown's Helldorado Days Parade or impersonating a character from local history, Goodman has projected himself as the living symbol of the city's party spirit (and he has the T-shirt with a caricature of himself as Vegas Vic to prove it.)

He generates a chorus of catcalls from the press and the teetotaling public with his many references to copious gin consumption and brutal remarks about the homeless. His endorsement of Bombay Sapphire gin generated an unsuccessful ethics complaint, and his "Martinis with the Mayor" mixers have been jammed with local business types hoping to bend an elbow with hizzoner.

Goodman is nationally recognized as the big-dreaming, gin-drinking Vegas mayor, but he's downright boring compared to former Las Vegas Mayor Fred Hesse, who held the office from 1925 to 1931.

Goodman laps his gin, but Hesse stilled his own -- and not by the glassful. Hesse, no stranger to bootlegging and speak-easies, was charged in 1929 with conspiring to violate the Volstead Act at a time when such federal offenses proliferated.

Ever the accurate prognosticator, the Las Vegas Evening Review opined in 1929 that Prohibition would be around forever. "It is there to stay, no matter how unpopular it might eventually prove," a no-doubt thirsty editor wrote. "Whatever relief is obtained from the present condition will be legislated by modification of the Volstead Act."

Hesse made the point, criticizing the federal government's ban on booze.

"Hesse just didn't accept the establishment," UNLV history professor and author Eugene Moehring said. "He thought the Volstead Act was a violation of individual freedom. He was a lot like Oscar in many ways."

Hesse was hamstrung by calls from do-gooders for his resignation -- and like all accomplished elected officials, he exhausted his appeals -- but a recall effort failed to cut short his final term. He retired from public office and was replaced by Ernie Cragin, who swept into the mayor's seat by a wide margin on a laughable platform of reform and clean living in Southern Nevada. I say laughable because 1931 also saw Nevada legalize casinos and crack an endless keg of whiskey in the name of attracting gamblers from far and wide.

Compared to Hesse, our Martini mayor drinks from a sippy cup.

But even Hesse would be hard-pressed to top Prohibition-era Reno Mayor E. E. Roberts.

After the national director of the Methodist Board of Temperance and Public Morals called Nevada a combination of "Sodom, Gomorrah, and perdition," Roberts responded that if he had his way, there would be a barrel of corn whiskey and a dipper on every Reno street corner with a "sign directing all favorably inclined to drink as much as they pleased, but not to carry any away," The Associated Press reported. "Liquor, according to the mayor's plan, would come from a municipal still, operated at public expense and would be good corn whiskey."

Now there's a politician whose T-shirt I would wear with pride.

Goodman's endless boosterism at times is enough to give Vegas Vic a headache, but it's also in keeping with a long-standing Las Vegas mayoral tradition. Jan Jones was the first Las Vegas mayor to excel in the national spotlight, but Goodman has taken the promotions side of the job to dizzying heights.

With his controversial gin endorsement and his promotional entourage of leggy showgirls and an Elvis impersonator, Goodman has shown his P.T. Barnum side, and the result has been the generation of millions of dollars in free Las Vegas-themed television time. It's also fed his insatiable ego.

"I think Jones and Goodman represent the biggest change, in that they've brought more dazzle to the mayor's office," said Michael Green, history professor at the Community College of Southern Nevada. "There are times I look at Oscar and I say he's not that interesting. But whoever succeeds Goodman is going to feel like a hangover because you cannot be that interesting. You cannot top him, I don't think.

"If we top it, I'll shudder."

I'll drink to that, professor.

John L. Smith's column appears Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. E-mail him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call 383-0295.