Odd Brown and Gay Moments In The Vegas Mayor Race

This week, I've finally started doing some reporting on the non-partisan race to replace Oscar Goodman as mayor of Las Vegas. The primary is April 5, there are 18 candidates in the scrum and the leader at the moment by all accounts is Goodman's wife, Meadows School founder Carolyn Goodman. I spent some time with the couple the other night at a Martinis With The Mayor event and I have a sit-down interview with Mrs. Goodman this afternoon.

But last night, I attended a forum featuring four Democratic candidates, Councilman Steve Ross, county commissioners Larry Brown and Chris Giunchigliani and activist Katie Duncan, put on by Si Se Puede, a Hispanic Democratic group. Carolyn Goodman, a registered independent, and Victor Chaltiel, the wealthy and free-spending Sheldon Adelson-backed Republican, were not invited because they're not Democrats.

I live-tweeted the event, which was emcee'd by ex-U.S. Rep. Dina Titus, who seemed to relish in taking (loving?) shots at the current mayor. At one point, in asking about graffiti prevention policy, she quipped: " "Do you agree with removing thumbs or do you have other ideas?" Later, when a question arose about being a spokesperson for the destination, she wryly noted to the audience before letting the quartet answer: "I don’t think any of these candidatess would go to a fourth grade class and say the only thing they would want on desert island is a bottle of gin."

But a few other moments stood out involving the two fellows to your right, Ross (left) and Brown. [Photo from Twitpic courtesy of @TheLMurrieta]

First, the candidates were asked their views on education and the DREAM Act, the federal bill that would create a path to citizenship for immigrant students who have lived in the U.S. for a certain length of time but are not legally here. It's important to the immigrant community because so many of these kids have been raised in the U.S. despite their undocumented status -- which many may or may not even kn0w -- and then cannot get college loans because they're not legal residents.

The point is, the DREAM Act is one of the most significant pieces of the Hispanic Democratic agenda and the candidates are appearing before an Hispanic Democratic group. It's been in the news constantly for years and, in fact, Sen. Harry Reid's championing of it helped rally the Hispanic vote that is widely credited with his victory last fall.

So what was the response of Ross, generally seen to be in fourth or fifth place in the polls for mayor?

"I don't know enough about that to answer one way or the other."

Huh? How is it even possible for a candidate -- nay, an elected official -- to not know something this basic? Either he's tragically ignorant or he didn't want to give his true answer because he knew the group wouldn't like it, but either way it looked awful for him.

The other thing was County Commissioner Larry Brown saying he would support repeal of Nevada's domestic partnership law, which passed two years ago. Ross said he would support repeal, too, but he had already been endorsed by the conservative group Nevada Concerned Citizens so that wasn't a surprise.

This actually matters a great deal and here's why: If the next mayor of Las Vegas is seen as hostile to gay couples, it would be disastrous to the decade-old efforts to aggressively court GLBT tourists to the destination. It was former Mayor Jan Jones way way WAY back in the 1990s who was only the second big-city mayor in America to endorse gay marriage -- Willie Brown of San Francisco was first, of course -- and then Jones took that message into her gig as a veep with Harrah's. There is a straight line from Jones' early and vocal support of marriage equality to the world's biggest gaming company's revolutionary efforts to court gay travelers to MGM and Wynn catching wise to the lobbying efforts that resulted in the domestic partnership law. The casino industry knows this is a very, very important and sensitive minority. The gay media will go nuts if there's even a whiff that Las Vegans have elected an anti-gay mayor.

So it matters if Brown, who is either second or third in the polls and has a 50/50 chance of facing off with Carolyn Goodman in the June general election, is in favor of stripping gay Nevadans of hard-won rights. Oscar Goodman as equally full-throated as Jones in his support of gays and gay business and culture, even appearing as half of a gay couple in a gay "Christmas Carol" spoof. (Chris G., the other candidate jockeying for second place in the primary, has long been an ardent pro-gay activist.)

The way the question was asked at the forum, however, the candidates were only allowed to give a yes or no answer. Near the end, Titus said she had received a request to ask the candidates to explain their views on domestic partnerships but she felt it had already been answered so she replaced it with some milquetoast question about general mayoral qualifications.

Afterward, then, gay activists Derek Washington, Laura Martin and Chris Miller chased Brown for an explanation but, uh, he ducked into the bathroom. When he came out, he was ready to talk to them but they weren't nearby so instead he sat down with me for a half-hour for my story.

Here's the odd exchange we had on that topic:

Friess: There’s a gaggle of gay activists who are waiting to ask you this. The question was, do you support repealing…

Brown: I’ve got to talk to Derek, because he has to explain to me first of all what the state law is and what we do at the local government in interpretation of it. I was the first one to answer out of that. I have to make sure what I answered yes or no to.

Friess: You answered yes to repealing the domestic partner law.

Brown: And I think they said that came from a Nevada Concerned Citizens survey. I’ll stand by the answer and I’ll have Derek and the other guy who’s chasing me around explain the background and the history, the status, how it affects local government. I remember having these conversations two years ago [when he was running for County Commission] because it was a partisan race. My concern back then was, separate fromt eh state law because I’m not real sure what it says …

Friess: I can tell you what it says. The law basically allows same-sex couples or non-married heterosexual couples to register as domestic partners and it grants them any rights that are given to married couples within the state.

Brown: And my big discussion two years ago is, what impact that has on the local government. It doesn’t matter if it’s a domestic couple or boyfriend-girlfriend or whatever gender, whatever, what impact fiscally does it have? So if it’s state law and the city has adopted it, I would have to be educated better.

Friess: Where do you stand on gay marriage?

Brown: Gay marriage or civil marriages or…

Friess: Do you think a gay couple should be able to get married either in the state or in the country?

Brown: Uhh, I’d have to get, uh, there’s some conflicting beliefs. Some conflicting beliefs.

We moved on to other topics at that point. But, again, I'm baffled -- as I was with Ross and the DREAM Act -- that a major elected official hasn't given serious thought to an issue like this. He doesn't know where he stands on gay marriage? Or civil unions? Or domestic partnerships? Doesn't he pay even a passing notice to the news? Is there even a week where there's not some gay news in the mainstream press nowadays? Is it credible for a Clark County commissioner, arguably one of the eight or nine most powerful people in the state, to claim he needs to be "educated" on this?

I'm not beating the gay-rights drum here. I'm not. I'm just saying that people running for public offices at this level ought to have a familiarity with the most significant social issues of the day. Telling an Hispanic group you don't know what the DREAM Act is is lethal to a candidacy. Telling the world that you oppose a domestic partnership law that was passed with a veto-proof majority in the state legislature could be extremely harmful to your city's main industry, tourism.

Nevada Secretary of State Fails To Look Ahead On Web

One of the folks I should have included as a WINNER in my list of media winners and losers from the election is Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller. The Web efforts he has helmed have been terrific, with timely and merged data rolling in and available for press and normal person alike at SilverState2010.Com.


Last go-around, they used now-defunct SilverState2008.Com, so they're building a bit of a trademark. The design is attractive and easy to use and I heard no complaints about load times or crashing on Election Night.

But. On a whim, I went to see how much foresight Miller's gang have had. I searched the GoDaddy.Com registry for SilverState2012.Com. Lookit:


The state doesn't own it. For about $10, a 35-year-old Chris Langhorst of Las Vegas snapped it up.

Two nights ago.

Oops.

Langhorst, who has this audio/video company, tells me he was watching the TV coverage at home and decided to check the SoS site because numbers were slow to roll in. Then he went to GoDaddy.Com on his iPhone, saw that the next logical iteration of Nevada's election Internet center was vacant. He grabbed it.

"I was very surprised," he told me. "You’d figure they’d take care of that stuff."

You would think. And look what's still out there:

Langhorst didn't do it to cybersquat, really. He doesn't know why he did it, other than that it was cheap and he was curious what would happen next. He even asked me what I knew about this sort of thing, and I mentioned I'd covered the topic some. Here's my New York Times piece from September 2008 on political domain-name squatting.

Yet this is a little different. Langhorst hasn't grabbed someone's name, which could be considered their trademark or intellectual property and which Internet governing agencies have forced surrender of in certain situations. (And by the way, Sen. John Ensign does NOT own JohnEnsign.Com. Some dude named Eugene does. Really. A clue to his future plans?)

I'm just fascinated that the crack team in Miller's office -- and I mean that sincerely, because their election night site is really a model for the nation -- didn't think ahead. Their options now are to (a) ask Langhorst nicely to vacate, (b) pay Langhorst to vacate or (c) pick another URL. And if they go with (c) they might buy up the next permutations in advance. Or, better yet, pick one that's not year-sensitive.

Consider this an S.O.S. to the SoS.

ELECTION: PresidentMcCain.Com Silliness

I'm taking a breather having filed a bunch of material on voters just now for Newsweek and I went to look at what you'd find at PresidentObama.Com and PresidentMcCain.Com. It's interesting, actually. Go to PresidentObama.Com and you're routed to a Google search for Barack Obama.

But PresidentMcCain.Com leads you to, uh, something else altogether. I don't know how long this will be there, but there's this totally perverted -- but not obscene or x-rated, so it's work-safe -- 2-minuteish cartoon. Here are a couple of frames:



OK, so McCain in a diaper is somewhat obscene. Fine.

Back to work...

SEE GEORGE WALLACE FOR FREE. PERIOD.

After my post yesterday, the George Wallace folks did some research and determined that giveaways in exchange for votes is against federal law, as I wrote and as Starbucks and others realized.

So here's the new deal: Go to the Flamingo box office between now and Nov. 11 and ask for a free ticket. Period. That's all you have to do. According to Laura Herlovich, spokeswoman for Wallace, that's all it takes now. No need for an "I Voted" sticker or to say you voted or anything else. Just walk up and ask for a free seat. I'm assuming this would apply for that night's show and that if that night's audience is full then you're out of luck. But otherwise, it's a great opportunity. Too bad Jennifer Holliday's not performing with him anymore, though.

Anyone who tries this, let me know. And enjoy the show.

ELECTION: P-Ho's Brilliant Idea, Geo Wallace's Illegal One

UPDATE: GEORGE WALLACE'S FOLKS CALLED. PER FEDERAL ELECTION LAW, ANYONE CAN GO TO THE BOX OFFICE FOR A FREE TICKET. TRYING TO GET MORE DETAILS.

(Update: It's been brought to my attention that George Wallace did announce his ticket giveaway during early voting. OK. But it's still, evidently, against federal law.)

The Miracle Mile Shops at Planet Hollywood will air CNN's live Election Night coverage starting at 3 p.m. PT on Tuesday on the 130-by-40-foot LED video screen outside the mall. There'll be full sound, too.

As a journalist about to plunge into coverage of this election for three different national outlets, I cannot overstate how smart this is. Does it even matter if many tourists on the Strip will be riveted? They probably will be, but who cares? The worldwide media will be seeking an unusual visual, of course. What could convey the importance and worldwide obsession with this news event quite like the notion that it has swept up even the most unserious people on Earth, vacationers on the Strip in Sin City? I predict Planet Ho should get quite a lot of what they call in the business "impressions" from this entirely free move.

Meanwhile, on the flip side, Flamingo comic George Wallace announced today he's giving away one free ticket to his show to each person who brings in an "I Voted" sticker to the box office by Nov. 11. That sounds like a nice idea, except for two things. First, Starbucks just abandoned its plan to give away free tall coffee to just voters on Election Day because of fears that that could be in violation of federal election law because it's illegal to reward people with stuff for voting. Starbucks spokeswoman Valerie O'Neil issued a statement tonight that said: “To ensure we are in compliance with election law, we are extending our offer to all customers who request a tall brewed coffee." So free coffee for everyone, folks!

But the other reason why Wallace's idea is just a cheap promotional stunt: He announced it today instead of, say, two weeks ago. In Clark County, 53 percent of eligible voters have already voted. Only 80 percent are expected, so about two-thirds of those planning to vote are done. And very few of them still have their "I Voted" stickers. Fewer still are the tourists who will bring theirs from points unknown. I'm betting that fewer than a dozen people, if that, take him up on this offer.

P.S. I'm scheduled to be Dave Berns' guest on KNPR at about 10 a.m. PT Tuesday for a little while talking about what I'm finding at the polls, so you can listen live at knpr.org. I'll also be Twittering throughout the day, but may not be able to blog. My Twitter updates appear to your left on this blog, in case you haven't noticed that before.

LIttle Election Bits From Swing-State NV

I just thought I'd share a few sights and notes of the season as we wind down to the end of the Greatest Reality Show Ever. Want to know how contentious this whole thing is? Well, I just heard Rush Limbaugh begin to suggest that Obama's fixed the election. This after an Associated Press piece detailed several devious Republican voter suppression efforts. There were none to speak of for Democrats.

But, anyhow, here's another sign. Look at what I saw the other day in northwest Las Vegas:


Yikes. Meanwhile, I was up real early this morning with a little insomnia and saw that the well-oiled Obama web machine had allowed -- gasp! -- a grammatical glitch...


But, true to form, they caught it and fixed it hours later:


Oh, and in fairness I need to follow up on the Poker-for-Obama post from Friday. I interviewed Doyle Brunson, the poker legend, on Saturday. He's for McCain. He wouldn't say why. Both Phil Laak and Antonio Esfandiari said they're pro-Obama.

Finally, this morning I received my Review-Journal in a Porter For Congress bag paid for by the National Rifle Association. That is, I don't live in Porter's district. Also, I already voted as did more than 53 percent of registered voters in my county.

So my question is: Is it a partisan act if I use that bag to pick up after my dogs? Or should I wait until Wednesday just to be sure?

No Voting On The Strip This Time

We all remember the hullabaloo surrounding the Nevada caucuses that took place in the ballrooms of several resorts in January. It was seen near and far as an amusing, very Vegas sideshow during the Great Obama-Clinton Struggle of 2008. God, doesn't that seem like a long time ago?

As much credit as the national press and Strip employees gave the gaming bosses for helping them participate in such a time-certain event, some workers are now grumbling that there's no Early Voting trailer set up to help them get to the polls during, before or after their work days. In 2004, there was one and MGM Mirage even ran shuttle buses to ferry employees to and fro. (The site was on an empty lot along Industrial Road behind the Mirage where an employment center for CityCenter is being built.)

Was this, MGM Mirage employees wondered, a diabolical plot by Republican and McCain backer Terry Lanni, the C.E.O., to suppress Democratic voting, seeing how Barack Obama's chances are looking a lot better than John Kerry's were four years ago?

"That’s stupid in many, many ways, including all of the effort we have put in to remind people to vote, to encourage people to vote," MGM Mirage spokesman Alan Feldman said. "Terry even sent out a letter reminding people."

Then what happened? Well, MGM Mirage and the other gaming companies got together in 2004 to set up the Early Voting trailer but, by the time they got it all arranged, the other companies dropped out. MGM Mirage had to cover the entire cost, which may have been north of $5,000, Clark County Registrar of Voters Larry Lomax said.

For all that cost and effort, results were modest in 2004. The polling places, staffed by county employees and equipped with expensive, handicap-accessible portable toilets, were open from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. for the two weeks only to become among the least-used sites in the county, Lomax said. This after similarly low usage occurred in 1998, 2000 and 2002 when Early Voting polling sites were set up at the Fashion Show Mall.

Lomax gave one more reason the county decided to abandon the concept: Once word got out that the county was allowing the resorts to pay to arrange a polling place, other interest groups started clamoring for ones, too, and offering to pay. "Turnout was lousy and we also learned it was not a good idea for other people to start bidding for polling places," Lomax said. "We no longer let anyone pay for a site."

That all makes sense, but Feldman said the company probably wouldn't have bothered this year anyway. Early voting polling sites are ubiquitous and convenient all over the valley -- I voted in a supermarket 10 days ago. "There’s ample opportunity for folks when they’re off shift to go vote," Feldman said. "It's not necessary anymore for us to do this."

So that's that. It does seem to be working. The voting totals thus far have been ginormous and the Democrats certainly aren't hurting.

Vegas Says Politics is Hip

This is kind of amazing to me. Those who followed politics and those who partied hardy in Vegas never used to be the same group. But in this weird year, when the World Series hopes for a ratings bump from tonight's Barack Obama Show, when US Weekly covers the candidates as if they were pop-culture celebrities and when Paris Hilton offers a more sensible energy plan than either O'Biden or McPalin, I supposed it makes sense that the Strip would get in the act, too. This is, after all, the Greatest Reality Show Ever.

Beyond the Get Out The Vote event noticed above for Saturday night involving Amy Smart and will.i.am, LAVO at Palazzo is also hosting an election-night results party on Nov. 4 starting at 5:30 p.m. (Click here to get on the guest list.) According to the email invite I received, "the most influential movers and shakers" will be there. With the Democrats gathering for their party's party at the Rio and the GOP gathering for theirs at the sportsbook formerly known as the 40/40 Club downstairs from LAVO, it really all depends on who they count as "movers and shakers."

Regardless, what a fascinating approach. I suspect we'll be seeing more of these events planned for Nov. 4 in coming days. Surely, for instance, the gays will gather at Krave? Oh, and Obama's coming back to Vegas for the 20th time -- and second time in a week -- on Saturday. So I guess our measly 5 electoral votes really matter.

The Friess Curse Is Over!

In my entire journalistic career, I have only ever covered presidential and vice presidential campaign losers. Dole, Kemp, Gore, Liebeman, Kerry and Edwards. They can all blame me. It was starting to weigh heavily on my mind this year as I've covered Obama, Clinton, Dodd, Biden, Romney, Huckabee, Richardson and, again, Edwards. The one time I was supposed to cover John McCain, he showed up 15 minutes early for a press conference and it only lasted 5 minutes. I showed up on time and totally missed him.

Well, the curse is now officially over. I covered Gov. Sarah Palin speaking in Henderson today. One way or the other, now, I will have been in the presence of the winner. I now officially am not responsible for the outcome of this election. What a relief. Here's the proof:


OK, she's hard to see. But look below at the enormity of the crowd at the Henderson Pavilion that Palin bafflingly referred to being delighted she was visiting the UNLV campus, which she was nowhere near. (Looking forward to seeing if anyone in the local press caught that since nobody nationally would've known the difference.)


In fact, the crowds were so huge that they had to put up huge screens for the overflow crowd that couldn't make it into the Pavilion proper, see?


Oh! Oh! Oh! I almost TOTALLY forgot! Just days after I listened on my iPod to a great NPR report about the history of presidential campaign songs, an art that evidently has gone by the wayside in our modern era, it so happens John McCain has one! They handed out this sheet music at the Palin rally today.


No, really. This is a real thing. It's copyrighted to a fellow named James Mann of Los Angeles. C'mon... Vote! Vote! Vote! Win! Win! Win! What other words could you possibly want in a campaign ditty? But, seriously, is McCain really shy or is that just an effort to make a rhyme? Why not the more age-appropriate "spry"?

Sadly, there was no Palinista sing-along in Henderson. Anyone out there who can read sheet music want to sing it for me? Leave it at (206) 424-4737. I'm dying to know how these brilliant lyrics leap off the page.

A busy weekend

I'm recovering a bit today from a whirlwind of a weekend, even by my own standards. Aside from following the case of the missing 6-year-old boy who happily was found late Saturday -- necessitating my attendance at a 12:30 a.m. press conference on Sunday -- I also had to go cover President Clinton's Vegas appearance. I didn't write anything for that because it was more of a babysitting job, but here's Molly Ball's account from the R-J. Since he made no gaffes and offered just the predictable campaign rhetoric, it wasn't worth a national story.

But there's more! First, on Friday night, my friend Trevor and I dined at the new Dal Toro restaurant at Palazzo. It was a tasty meal and the outdoor seating was particularly charming. While out there, look what we saw floating above the Treasure Island across the street?


Yep! It's the M Blimp. And suddenly I got it. It's not just about raising awareness for people who are in Vegas about the hotel-casino that opens five months from now 10+ miles south of the Strip. It's also an irresistible photo op for tourists. They snap it, show their friends, put it on their blogs, etc. Awareness raised. Ta-da.

Anyhow, on Saturday, after recording three new Petcasts and handling the missing-kid beat while he was still missing, I scooped up my Little Brother, Jamie. (LB as in Big Brothers Big Sisters.) He's now 18. He was 6 when we met. He's about to enlist in the Air Force, which is freaking me out. There's wars on, y'know. But he scored high on his tests and seems to have a path through the military in a technical or computer capacity that should keep him out of harm's way. Still, I worry. Oy.

We had two tasks Saturday: Voting and pumpkin carving. I wanted to be there both for his first adult civic act and to remind him of the joy of a childhood fast slipping away. Here he is at the Albertson's where the Early Voting booths were set up.


And here he is doing the deed. It was cute when he got a little confused as to how it works. The kid can play any video game there is and those consoles have about 15,000 buttons, but the touch-screen voting booth was confusing. Ha!


I won't discuss his or my vote, but I am proud to say that between his 18th birthday in August when he was basing his decision on The Daily Show and Saturday, when he voted, he seemed to be up to speed. He even watched two of the debates, which floored me. Maybe this military thing has him paying more serious attention to the political world or, perhaps, he's just as sucked in as the rest of us to The Greatest Reality TV Competition Ever. Either way, I was glad he had more substance upon which to make his conclusions.

A funny anecdote: As Jamie and I headed into the supermarket, sample ballots in hand, an older woman stopped us. "Oh, it's just so nice to see the young people coming out to vote," she said. Later, at home, I relayed this story to Miles. Miles' answer: "You think she was talking to you, don't you?" Frown Face.

Voting at the grocery store is very convenient, by the way, when you're also shopping for pumpkins...


We picked up six and headed to my friend Natalie's place to carve with her two young boys and one of their little friends. To be honest, Nat's kids lost interest around the painstaking clean-out-the-gourd phase, but Jamie was on task...



While Jamie and I used an image on a trace paper from a book, Natalie did a nice job freehanding...


And Natalie's kids' friend really did a neat job carving Trick or Treat into his...



How did I do? Well, I'm not much of an artist, but once we lit up the one I did from trace paper, it actually looked about right. That's the one on the left. The demented one on the right below I did quickly with a large knife just to get it done and Miles likes it more. I think it's sort of looks like Dick Cheney.


Oh! Did I mention who else helped?


Natalie has a 2-month-old long-haired Chihuahua named ... uh... well, I thought it was Paquito but that's not coming up in the English-Spanish dictionary and I remember Natalie saying it was Spanish for "little one." So maybe it's Pequeño? For half the time I was there, I thought his name was Mojito. That's a fun name for a dog, no? Anyone know if pumpkin guts are bad for little Mexican canines?

On Sunday, in addition to spending a couple of hours being interviewed by a reporter for Q Vegas for a forthcoming profile of me and handling that Clinton non-thing, I also made two varieties of pumpkin seeds, salty one from this recipe and a salty-sweet one from this one.

They're already gone.

Can you bet on the election in Vegas?

My father just called. He was asking me to find out the Vegas betting-line odds on the presidential election. I was bemused and explained to him that there is no such thing. The Brits are known for this sort of thing, but I don't believe that betting on electoral politics in the United States is legal. I mean, how would that work, anyway? What sort of handicapping would go on?

Sometimes, I told him laughing, casinos put out odds just for fun on some things. He seemed convinced such a betting construct exists.

Am I right or wrong?