Daughters help competing fathers

The race for the 3rd Congressional District will surely focus on the differences between Democrat Robert Daskas and the incumbent, Republican Rep. Jon Porter. But the two men have something in common: Both have daughters named Nicole helping with their campaigns.

Porter's daughter, 26, has been working in Republican politics since she interned in the Senate office of John Ensign in 2001. She's now a full-time employee of Weeks & Co., a corporate and Republican political messaging firm based in Texas.

Having created paid media for numerous Nevada Republicans for years, Weeks earlier this year opened a branch in Las Vegas. Nicole Porter is the only staffer in the Sunset Road office, but space is sublet to the Porter for Congress campaign, which employs Porter's campaign manager, Matt McCullough.

Nicole previously worked for November Inc., the Nevada Republican campaign firm headed by Mike Slanker before he went to D.C. to work for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

The company's president, David Weeks, wouldn't disclose Nicole's salary. Her job is fundraising. In addition to her father, she is helping the re-election campaign of Rep. Dean Heller, R-Nev., and has done work for Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani.

Meanwhile, at his campaign announcement last week, Daskas said he consulted with his Nicole as he struggled with the decision to run for office for the first time.

After hearing her daddy's explanation, the 8-year-old left his home office, he said, returning half an hour later with a stack of paper.

The top page bore four words: "Daskas for a difference."

"I think it has a nice ring to it," the candidate said, grinning. Behind him, family members held signs bearing the slogan crafted by his young consultant.

RUDY'S WONDERS

Rudy Giuliani's ties to Las Vegas deepened recently with a Chicago Tribune article revealing his company did consulting work for Eighth Wonder LLC, a developer that made a failed bid to build a casino resort in Singapore.

Giuliani Partners, the Republican presidential candidate and former New York mayor's firm, made an undisclosed amount for advising on security. Had the bid been successful, the company would have helped design and operate security systems and staff at the proposed resort complex, according to Peter Wagg, a senior vice president of Eighth Wonder.

Eighth Wonder's president is Mark Advent, a participant in the design of the New York-New York casino on the Strip. Other projects the company has embarked upon, such as a proposed "East Village" mixed-use property near McCarran Airport, have largely fallen through.

Contacted directly, Advent refused to talk about the Giuliani contract himself, referring queries to Wagg, who was not at the company when its relationship with Giuliani Partners began.

Eighth Wonder brought Giuliani Partners on in July 2006. Four months later, another company, Melco PBL, joined the "consortium" on the bid, which included Siemens Corp. as engineering consultants and the soccer star Pele to operate a stadium as part of the resort.

Melco PBL is a joint venture between an Australian company and a Hong Kong firm run by Lawrence Ho, one of the 17 children the Macau magnate Stanley Ho has fathered by four wives. Stanley Ho is controversial for his alleged ties to Chinese organized crime and his relationship with North Korea's Kim Jong Il.

Another of Stanley Ho's children, Pansy Ho, is MGM Mirage's partner in its Macau resort.

Giuliani went to Singapore as part of Eighth Wonder's presentation of its $3.5 billion proposal in November 2006, but the winning bidder was Genting Group, a Malaysian company.

Wagg said he didn't believe Giuliani's company bore any of the fault for the failure. He said Giuliani Partners had no association with Melco PBL, that the security consulting did not include any vetting of potentially troublesome partners, and that Lawrence Ho has nothing to do with his father's purported activities.

Wagg said Eighth Wonder is now in the early stages of three development projects that he could not yet discuss. He said the projects are not in Las Vegas.

Giuliani has been criticized for refusing to disclose his firm's client list, which he claims has mostly been ferreted out by the press anyway.

At the same time, Giuliani has a major backer in Las Vegas in Sheldon Adelson, the Sands Corp. chairman and world's sixth-richest man. Last month, the New York Post revealed that Giuliani's campaign was paying more than $100,000 for travel on a Sands private jet.

The Sands-owned Venetian has hosted several Giuliani fundraisers.

A Giuliani Partners spokeswoman, Sunny Mindel, said the company doesn't discuss details of its work for its clients. She said the company had never done work for Adelson or Sands, or for any other gaming company or Las Vegas company.

A campaign spokesman, Jarrod Agen, said the Sands jet is no longer being used.

BOOTS ON THE GROUND

Two Democratic presidential campaigns announced endorsements from local unions in Las Vegas last week, the first in what could become a wave of Nevada unions trying to exert influence on the state's new early caucus.

Previously, only national unions with members in Nevada had lent labor weight to the candidates here. Some unions endorse candidates at the top level, while others "release" their locals to make independent decisions about whom to endorse.

If the assumption that union members will form the Nevada Democratic caucus' standing army is true, a battle of the numbers is under way.

John Edwards so far is leading, with endorsements from three international unions -- carpenters, steelworkers and transport workers -- that the campaign says have a total of 24,000 active and retired members in Nevada.

Hillary Clinton last week got the nod of Las Vegas stagehands, who number about 4,500. She also is supported globally by the bricklayers (500 Nevada members), transportation and sheet metal workers (3,300), machinists and aerospace workers (1,700), letter carriers (2,200), amalgamated transit (500) and state workers (4,000), for a total of nearly 18,000 troops.

Yes, the transport workers, transportation workers and transit workers are three different unions -- railroads, public transportation and Greyhound drivers, to oversimplify.

Bill Richardson last week got the nod from one of two Las Vegas electrical workers unions. He's also supported by the Nevada cement masons union, for a total of about 4,500 workers between the two.

Chris Dodd is supported by the International Association of Fire Fighters, who have about 2,600 active and retired Nevadans in their ranks. But one of their number, Assembly Majority Leader John Oceguera, D-Las Vegas, is personally supporting Clinton.

This illustrates that while unions may influence their members, they don't control their votes. The Edwards campaign has claimed that it has the private support of many workers whose unions may have endorsed other candidates, attracted by his working-class message.

It also shows why the 18,000 Service Employees International Union members in Nevada and especially the 60,000-member Culinary union endorsements are so coveted.

The campaigns of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel don't have endorsements from any unions with Nevada members.

Contact reporter Molly Ball at mball@ reviewjournal.com or (702) 387-2919.