Shoes dropping

Baseball fans seem to be greeting Barry Bonds' ascendancy to the home run throne with expectations that he'll be stripped of the crown soon enough.

Funny how a public that believes it's been duped never quite gives up hope for justice.

Maybe that other shoe will drop with an indictment and definitive proof that Bonds used performance-enhancing drugs, or maybe he keeps playing long enough to get his 3,000th hit even as young Alex Rodriguez chugs toward 800 career home runs.

As those of us who aren't so fond of Mr. Bonds wait for an asterisk to be applied to his record in permanent ink, valley residents can look forward to other shoe-dropping closure closer to home.

Anyone who follows career politicians must endure some nasty odors and fans them when they're just too rotten to tolerate. That's why the arrest of Brian Atkinson Turner and Kathryn O'Gara on Tuesday night seemed like justice catching up to what has smelled so wrong for so long.

Turner is the son of former Clark County Commissioner Yvonne Atkinson Gates. Some trouble as a minor was trumped by some minor drug arrests as an adult.

Then, this week, he and his wife were busted on charges of child endangerment, contributory neglect and possession of drug paraphernalia.

The arrests aren't related to the ongoing Las Vegas police investigation into Atkinson Gates' payments of campaign funds to Turner. Las Vegas Sun reporters Marshall Allen and Tony Cook first broke the story of the $356,166 in payments Atkinson Gates made to her son, his then-fiancee and the couple's triad of companies.

At the Democratic National Convention in Boston in 2004, Atkinson Gates was being honored for her work leading the DNC's Black Caucus. It was perhaps the apex of her political career, being feted on a national stage.

It never seemed right that an ethically troubled county commissioner from Las Vegas should be leading fundraising for a key constituency of the Democratic Party. But there she was, friends from home crowding around the cheese plate, wine glasses raised to avoid spilling a precious drop, as others jostled for position.

At the same time Atkinson Gates was off hustling for John Kerry and Co., she was also reeling in $750,000 for her own re-election campaign when she had no credible Republican opponent in her overwhelmingly Democratic district. Atkinson Gates' race drew little attention amid a presidential campaign that saw George W. Bush edge Kerry by 2.5 percent statewide.

She ended up taking 74 percent of the vote, but not before paying her son and his future wife more than half the amount she raised.

But Atkinson Gates was not just funneling money to her son and O'Gara -- she was also shepherding business. She sent her good friend, Debbie Conway, to Turner's Advibe Advertising, where the son had made a name for himself with local campaign vendors as a passer of bad checks, according to news reports.

Conway, who was elected county recorder to clean up the mess Fran Deane made of the place, is an Atkinson Gates crony to the core. KLAS-TV's George Knapp has developed a side beat following the ins and outs of the financial ties between the two women.

Someday that shoe may drop as well.

It's clear the cops had a case against Turner when he was bouncing checks, but the new charges against the son of a former county commissioner are more than likely designed to get someone to turn on the family matriarch.

The other shoe should drop despite Atkinson Gates' declaration that she stepped down from the commission last year only to spend more time with family.

With all the dirt in the treads, the shoe looks more like a contractor's boot. It seems the question is when, not if, it will drop.

Speaking of dirt, it's long been a mystery how former Las Vegas City Councilman Michael McDonald has escaped various public corruption probes unscathed. Now comes word the other shoe -- the really big shoe -- might be dropping with him, too. A federal grand jury is poking around McDonald's finances in a potential tax evasion case. (When all else fails, there's always the tax evasion case.)

McDonald's consulting firm, Alpha Omega Strategies, has an agreement to plunk down $6.5 million for 13 acres at Decatur Boulevard and Vegas Drive to develop some senior housing.

I'm sure McDonald can still twist some arms to raise capital, but $6.5 million seems like an awful lot for an ex-cop and ex-councilman who was in the thick of the Michael Galardi corruption juggernaut that has put four former county commissioners in federal prison.

Perhaps a tax case is a stretch and that other shoe will never fall for McDonald.

At least we've got Gates -- and failing that, the home run king.

Erin Neff's column runs Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. She can be reached at (702) 387-2906, or by e-mail at eneff@reviewjournal.com.