Ex-Lawyer for Mob May Be Good Bet in Vegas Election

LAS VEGAS —  The establishment in the “new” Las Vegas loves to talk about the explosion in family entertainment, the number of churches per capita (“Highest in the nation!”) and the joys of living in suburbs that reach ever-farther into the desert.

Oscar B. Goodman loves to talk about the old days, when he busted up dozens of government attacks on reputed mobsters and kept Anthony “Tony the Ant” Spilotro out of jail despite suspicions that the feared Mafia enforcer had committed nearly two dozen murders.

Now, the renowned criminal defense lawyer says with a smile: “I want to make Las Vegas my No. 1 client.”

Goodman, purported mouthpiece for the mob, is running for mayor.

It is a political contest that promises to be expensive, raucous and just plain fun to watch. Goodman’s mercurial candidacy has both the 59-year-old attorney and America’s fastest-growing city struggling to reconcile new images with old ones.

Frenetically skipping about the town he adopted 34 years ago, Goodman is the avuncular synagogue president, family man and civil rights defender. But back in his plush, marble-floored office, he also remains a snarling critic of “evil” FBI agents, who he says have tried to hurt his clients--charming men who merely “had disagreements with the government.”

Even his opponents put Goodman at or near the top of a field of nine candidates in the May 4 primary vying to make an expected June runoff. Just a week into the campaign, he demonstrated his seriousness by becoming the first candidate to launch TV ads. With a profile most of his opponents lack, he is already being heckled like the headliner.

Shades of Yesteryear

How, Goodman’s critics ask, can Sin City shed its corrupt image with Meyer Lansky’s onetime attorney running the show?

The Las Vegas Review-Journal has already pronounced: “Anybody but Oscar, mob mouthpiece wrong guy for mayor.” The newspaper’s editorial called Goodman a “barrister-to-butchers” who might threaten the Police Department’s funding and who would surely be a public relations “catastrophe.”

Looking forward to the election, one top tourism promoter sighed: “The last thing we need in the first week of June is screaming headlines across the country: ‘Mob lawyer is mayor of Las Vegas.’ ”

Goodman retorts that the city power structure’s real fear is that they can’t control him.

“They are afraid of me because I must be anti-establishment,” he said in an interview. “I am never going to do anything to embarrass Las Vegas. I love Las Vegas. This city is like a child to me.”

The door to the mayor’s office was thrown wide open when incumbent Jan Jones unexpectedly decided not to seek a third term and another top contender dropped out because of a heart condition.

That leaves three-term City Councilman Arnie Adamsen and Mark Fine, developer of two of the area’s largest housing tracts, as the best known and best financed of the candidates, along with Goodman.

The lack of independent polling makes it difficult to predict the outcome of the primary, although recent surveys by both Adamsen and Fine show Goodman making the runoff.

The town’s political observers concede that Goodman could emerge as a Sunbelt version of Jesse “The Body” Ventura, the former pro wrestler who stunned the nation by becoming governor of Minnesota last year.

It remains to be seen if Goodman, like Ventura, can lure disaffected voters to the polls in a city where municipal election turnout has hovered around 20%. “Oscar might generate a little more interest, but his big handicap is you need a well-oiled organization in place to get your people out there to vote,” said Billy Vassiliadis, a local political consultant.

‘I’m Going to Win This Thing’

As he works the phone in his downtown office, Goodman is convinced he will prevail. The man hailed about town as “the Big O” promises to spend “whatever it takes.” With each new endorsement or donation, he wags his finger and vows: “I’m going to win this thing!”

The gregarious Goodman delivers such pronouncements in the flat staccato of “a tough little punk from Philadelphia,” an Ivy League lawyer as comfortable with drug dealers and street hoods as he is with casino executives.

Even as he aspires to be a civic leader, he cannot resist adopting the manner of his more notorious clients. When a reporter presses him about a campaign misstep, the heavy eyelids lower and his voice grows husky: “What are you going to write? Am I gonna have to whack you?”

Goodman arrived in Las Vegas in 1964 with his wife, Carolyn, and “$87 in our pockets.” His first break came when a Canadian pornographer and gambler delivered $3,000 cash in an envelope, asking for help defending his brother from a charge of transporting a stolen vehicle. The client insisted: “You better not lose.”

A shaken Goodman won the acquittal and more clients followed. He later got Mafia financial genius Meyer Lansky dropped from a casino cash-skimming trial because of Lansky’s failing health. He kept the notorious Spilotro--the model for the character depicted by Joe Pesci in the movie “Casino,” in which Goodman played himself--out of jail, even as authorities leveled multiple charges of murder and racketeering. (Spilotro was later beaten and buried, probably still alive, in an Indiana cornfield.)

Goodman became a hero in some circles when he persuaded a judge in 1970 to throw out wiretap evidence obtained in 19 cities around the country--crippling a federal campaign against bookmaking.

In recent years, his clients have become more diverse, ranging from entertainer LaToya Jackson to boxer Mike Tyson and onetime San Diego Mayor Roger Hedgecock.

Despite years of intense scrutiny by federal authorities, Goodman has never been charged with a crime. Friends say the “mob law” caricature does not do Goodman’s career, or life, justice.

They note that he has devoted much of his practice to the poor and dispossessed, often pro bono. Late last year, he won release from prison for a cancer-ridden woman who had murdered her abusive husband. The National Assn. of Criminal Defense Lawyers once hailed Goodman as “Liberty’s last champion.”

His wife, whom he calls “Saint Carolyn,” founded and operates a respected private school. His four children all have graduate degrees from top universities.

But Goodman’s enduring reputation will trouble Las Vegans who want to distance themselves from the city’s past, said Michael Bowers, a political science professor at the University of Nevada Las Vegas.

“The corporations that have taken over the hotels and gaming operations certainly want people to believe . . . there is no mob influence,” Bowers said. “It’s very important for the economy and the legitimacy of Las Vegas to separate itself from that mobster image.”

One top political leader in the region disagreed.

“All Oscar has really done is give a voice to people who never really had a public voice,” said the politician, who asked not to be named. “I think that’s a quality you might want to have in a mayor.”

During his first speech of the campaign, a Chamber of Commerce candidates forum, Goodman declared: “I don’t want to hear about this ‘mob law’ nonsense. That is over and done with.” His campaign manager pledges not to accept a cent from disreputable figures.

Yet, on request, Goodman happily offers the 1998 British documentary “mob Law” as a retrospective of his career.

When a former Philadelphia councilman’s wife calls and offers to volunteer for his campaign, Goodman chuckles. He once defended the woman against charges that she fabricated 5,000 ballots.

“So I said to her, ‘I would love to see you,’ ” Goodman explained, ‘but we already have the phony-ballot person lined up.’ ”

Goodman’s office is chock-full of pictures of reputed mobsters and toy rats in traps, symbolizing his hatred of government informers. Among his most prized mementos: a set of framed steel balls given to him by reputed mobster Charlie “the Moose” Panarella, after Goodman risked jail by refusing to give investigators client billing records.

But his law practice has come second since March 5, when Goodman ended years of mulling politics and jumped into the mayor’s race. Now he spends most of his waking hours hustling contributions and mastering the art of campaigning.

Giddy one recent day at entering this new arena, he fielded a call from a Latino newspaper offering an endorsement, thanked two Catholic high school students for registering voters, and crowed that he had raised enough money in just three weeks to be competitive. When a young lawyer walked through his office’s atrium lobby, Goodman bellowed: “Louie, Louie, I’m on fire here! The money is just pouring in.”

Goodman’s outsider status resonates at places such as the Razor Sharp barbershop on the city’s mostly black west side, where patrons readily throw an arm around the pink-faced, silver-bearded candidate.

“He is already big-time. He doesn’t have to make a name for himself. So he can just do the right thing,” said Gordy McDonnell, 40, who is in for a trim.

Goodman is more tentative when he appears at the Chamber of Commerce forum. He forgets to mention a central campaign theme--his desire to have big developers help pay for civic improvements.

He sometimes throws out proposals, not yet fully formed, on the fly: Perhaps the city should ban trucks during peak hours to reduce its notorious traffic. Maybe social workers could visit the expanding ranks of the homeless and find them places to live. How about bringing an NFL team to town? And why not make Las Vegas a center of high tech? “Why go to Phoenix? This is the best lifestyle in the world. . . . You get free buffet.”

How to pay for those proposals? Goodman says he will figure that out later.

Goodman’s top opponents seem alternately wary and bemused by the race’s wild card. Fine, the developer, touts his long list of community activities--school fund-raiser, patron of the arts and promoter of an economy diversified beyond gambling. He said Goodman “doesn’t have a grip on what the issues are.”

Adamsen--so deliberate that a local cartoonist depicted him as Forrest Gump--said he has “made a very successful political career with people underestimating me.”

Once a casino craps dealer and now an executive with a property title company, the 49-year-old Adamsen said he could be described as “Mr. Crossing Guard” for his focus on public safety.

Neither man has raised Goodman’s representation of reputed organized crime figures. Yet. “The symbol of Oscar,” Fine said in an interview, “could send the wrong message around the country of what Las Vegas is all about.”

All three top candidates said they expect to spend about $500,000 in the primary, and as much as $1 million for the entire race, to reach just 178,941 registered voters.

All that to win an office that has little practical power.

The mayor is just one of five equal votes on the City Council. And the economic engine of the region is actually south of the city proper, in the unincorporated Strip, where most of the mammoth casinos stand.

The city’s mayor must rely heavily on charisma and popular appeal, qualities that Goodman supporters say he possesses in abundance.

“They can call me the mob lawyer, but there are so many other things about me,” Goodman said. “When I am through they are going to say, ‘He is a hell of a mayor.’ And that is the truth.”