Candidate Goodman makes name for herself

Editor's note: This is the first in a series of stories about the leading candidates in the Las Vegas mayor's race.

Outside a ballroom where a United Way luncheon was about to start Thursday at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas mayoral candidate Carolyn Goodman greeted a supporter who was, as many are, excited about her candidacy and ready to vote.

"Here's a Good Luck Mayor chip," said Carolyn Goodman, handing over a novelty poker chip with her cartoon likeness on it, similar to the chips her husband, Mayor Oscar Goodman, has made his trademark.

Of course, she has to correct herself.

"I mean, Good Luck Running for Mayor chip," she said. "I'm so used to Oscar's."

Stuff like that seems to happen all the time now that Carolyn Goodman is running in her first electoral contest and leading the pack to succeed her term-limited husband.

A Las Vegas Review-Journal/8NewsNow poll released over the weekend showed Goodman would capture 36.5 percent of the vote, more than double that of her closest competitor, Clark County Commissioner Larry Brown.

Brown's 17.5 percent in polling conducted by Las Vegas-based Magellan Research leads fellow Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani's 11.7 percent, while Las Vegas City Councilman Steve Ross garnered 6 percent and businessman Victor Chaltiel 4.8 percent.

Twenty percent remained undecided in the poll, which had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

The rest of the candidates in the 18-person field combined grabbed less than 4 percent.

Phrases and priorities Goodman has long repeated are part of her campaign patter, and the question that won't seem to go away is to what extent is Oscar Goodman -- who isn't shy about saying he would like to be mayor for life -- seeking a fourth term through his spouse of 48 years.

And you know what? In some ways, her campaign and supporters embrace that idea as a huge plus in her favor.

So here we are, in the midst of a campaign that could result in one Goodman following another as the face of their adopted city. To really put that in perspective, though, first consider a Las Vegas with no Oscar or Carolyn Goodman at all.

HOW SHE GOT HERE

It could have happened.

After law school, Oscar Goodman was too impatient to chain his career to a hierarchy in a large, established firm, so he and his bride started researching places to go. One of those was Heppner, Ore., a town in Morrow County that is remote even by the standards of rural eastern Oregon.

"I loved, and always did as a child, horses," Carolyn Goodman said, recalling watching black-and-white westerns as a child. "So here I was in a high-rise in New York City, falling in love with what I thought the Wild West was, and already riding horses.

"As we started to write these letters around the country, I said, 'Let's go somewhere where I can either raise horses or ride.' "

Oscar Goodman was offered a district attorney job, she said, "a job right out of law school ... and it's a rodeo center. And I thought it was absolute Nirvana. This is for us."

It's hard to imagine the Goodmans -- he from Philadelphia, she from New York City -- settling down in Oregon, said Richard Bryan, a former Nevada governor and U.S. senator who started in the Clark County district attorney's office the same year Goodman did.

But if they had, "Las Vegas would be a different community."

"First of all, Oscar Goodman would unlikely have become the mob's attorney," Bryan said. "The public persona of Oscar as someone who represented (mobster Tony) Spilotro and all that would not have come about, and his 'happiest mayor' persona would not have happened.

"I think it's fair to say The Meadows, the school, would never have come into existence."

Local historian and veteran television newsman Bob Stoldal disagreed somewhat, arguing that Las Vegas would not be substantially different -- except, perhaps, for downtown.

"He's really taken that by the reins, and that may be something that's different," Stoldal said. "He's clearly been the champion of downtown redevelopment. I don't think we'd be seeing the redevelopment and energy downtown without Mayor Goodman."

The couple chose Nevada, and what followed is well-known. Goodman took a job at the district attorney's office, and he and Carolyn arrived in 1964 with $87 between them.

She got a marketing job at the Riviera, then moved to Caesar's Palace. Goodman did, indeed, become a lawyer representing organized crime figures. Carolyn Goodman moved on to working in West Las Vegas providing counseling about job skills, drugs and families.

She received a master's degree at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She and her husband adopted four children.

meadows school opens

Then Carolyn Goodman started organizing parents to open a private school that would offer the kind of education she wanted for her children and that she felt Southern Nevada would need in coming years.

The Meadows opened in 1984 with 140 students in kindergarten through sixth grade.

Last year, the school had 897 students in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade, 150 employees, and a $17 million budget.

And in 1999 Goodman ran for mayor and pursued his downtown redevelopment agenda, which is why his wife says she wants the office now.

Though plenty of money -- at least $500,000 -- has rolled in since she announced her candidacy, last week was the first real fundraiser for Carolyn Goodman. Tuesday's cocktail mixer at Charlie Palmer's Four Seasons restaurant was hosted by Mainor Eglet, a law firm that is part of a new office building downtown.

She addressed the small crowd about halfway through the evening.

"He's not ruling the roost for the next four years if I'm lucky enough to be elected," she said.

HER OWN PERSON

What role Oscar Goodman would play if she is elected hasn't been discussed yet, said campaign manager Bradley Mayer, who also worked on Oscar Goodman's campaigns.

Mayer is among a few familiar faces from previous bids, including media man Tom Letizia and Mike and Dawn Kern, who do accounting for many campaigns.

The mayor's institutional knowledge will be useful, and he will help if asked; but Mayer said Carolyn Goodman doesn't need her husband in order to be mayor.

But she said the projects that have gained traction under his administration -- including the Fremont East bar district, the Mob Museum, Symphony Park, and a push for an arena for professional sports -- should continue to be the city's priorities.

"I was at the first meeting that my husband had in Sun City where he announced his vision for the future of our town and your town," Carolyn Goodman said. "He talked about how there is not a great city in this country without a center, a core."

Anyone who has listened to Mayor Goodman's stump speeches about the "culture, medicine, sports" trifecta will see something familiar.

"And it's very important to have a core that has culture," Carolyn Goodman continued. "And medicine, and research ... and sports, and entertainment vitality, which everybody from all sectors of the city would come down and enjoy. I am a leader and I love what my husband has done with all the support he has."

Politically, the couple has been all over the map. They were Republicans when they moved to Las Vegas, but switched to the Democratic Party to vote for Bryan when he ran for the Assembly. Then they switched to nonpartisan when Oscar Goodman was mulling a gubernatorial bid.

Her support has less to do with a political stance than with the continuity she represents, said Richard Kaufman, who plans to develop a hotel/restaurant in Symphony Park with Charlie Palmer.

Kaufman emphasized that he didn't know the other candidates and couldn't comment on their downtown effectiveness. But from an investment perspective when Las Vegas is troubled, Carolyn Goodman represents a "steady hand at the helm," Kaufman said.

"The light at the end of the tunnel looks a lot brighter with her in the seat," he said.

Louis Mortillaro, a friend of the Goodmans since 1971, said Carolyn Goodman is a steady hand in other ways.

"She's the rock. She wants to get the job done. Her kids will tell you they weren't afraid of Oscar growing up. Mom was the ultimate authority."

It's not that she is a stern disciplinarian, Mortillaro said, describing her as "fun and charming, but very focused."

"She's not as flamboyant. Oscar is very personable, flamboyant, high-visibility. She doesn't rely on jokes. In a sense, sometimes, Oscar likes to clown around. Carolyn is not a clown."

Carolyn Goodman says as much herself: "In his delivery, he is very different. In the core, we are identical."

That applies to redevelopment of the downtown core as well. It's what drove her into the race against what she refers to as "the other 17" candidates.

"I thought everybody's well-intentioned that's running, the other 17," she told the group Hispanics in Politics on Wednesday . "Everybody's certainly doing their best and has their own agenda.

"But my greatest fear was that as a new leader would come into the city ... they may want to establish something in their image as well. And I thought, 'My goodness. I want to make sure that the heartbeat and the excitement of what's going on downtown continues on the path that it started.' "

Contact reporter Alan Choate at achoate@reviewjournal.com or 702-229-6435.