Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2000 | 10:07 a.m.
Jon Ralston, who publishes the Ralston Report, writes a column for the Sun on Sundays and Wednesdays. Ralston can be reached at 870-7997 or by e-mail at [email protected].
Imagine if the Empire State Building and the World Trade Center were erased from the New York City skyline in the same year. The cityscape would be unrecognizable, the landscape forever changed.
Such is the impact in the first year of the new millennium as arguably the two towering figures of the gaming industry (Sorry, Mr. Trump) have receded from the scene -- one, Steve Wynn, because he sold his company, and another, Arthur Goldberg, who died last week.
Wynn may well return to prominence depending on the success he has on the Desert Inn parcel. But he is not likely to ever have the influence and clout he once had when he ruled Mirage Resorts.
And the departure of Park Place Entertainment's Goldberg, though not well known in Las Vegas, may well have a greater impact on the protean gaming industry than Wynn's sale of his company to Kirk Kerkorian. Even in a city that routinely razes buildings only to see them replaced by bigger and better buildings, it's hard to conceive of a casino corps without these titans.
One longtime gaming insider was blunt: "With Arthur and Steve gone, we've truly lost our testicles."
Indeed, besides Wynn, Goldberg may have been the most feared man in the industry. He was legendary for his doggedness and aggressiveness in pursuing deals, a man who thought he was fittest to survive in the Darwinian dwindling of that rare species called casino corporations.
But Goldberg's death is not just significant because it will hasten an internal power struggle at Park Place and leave the industry bereft of one of its most interesting characters. Why?
Wynn was a Bill Clinton supporter (at times) but this year is backing George W. Bush, as are several other industry leaders. But Goldberg was the only overtly Democratic chairman of a gaming company. He hosted Clinton and Al Gore in his East Coast home, consorted with key Democratic legislators on Capitol Hill and shoveled hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democrats each election cycle.
To be sure, fitness aficionado Goldberg also possessed that gymnastic ability that all tycoons develop with practice -- that is, the flexibility to support the other party when it's in the company's interests. A couple of years ago, when powerful New York Republican Sen. Al D'Amato was running for re-election, Goldberg hosted a fund-raiser for Senator Pothole at the Las Vegas Hilton.
Goldberg's Democratic propensities also made him a natural for Las Vegas labor interests to gravitate toward. "He had an actual personal relationship with labor leaders," pointed out one of his colleagues. "If there was going to be a fight, he was someone the union leaders could count on."
Indeed, Wynn and Goldberg were two of the most Culinary Union-friendly gaming bosses. Look at who the emerging powers are now: MGM MIRAGE'S Terry Lanni is a die-hard Republican (although he, too, knows when to support Democrats such as Harry Reid and Shelley Berkley). Harrah's Entertainment's Phil Satre is not known as a labor friend. And Mandalay Resort Group's Mike Ensign has always considered the union a necessary evil. Add in the Venetian's Sheldon Adelson, suggested one observer, and "they are moderate at best and hostile at worst."
Truth be told, Goldberg, who had been quietly ill for a couple of years, had not been influential for some time as he had been delegating his authority to a group of men who, as one insider put it, "clearly don't like each other." But he gave a lot of power to his Las Vegas lieutenant Mark Dodson, who is now the chairman of the Nevada Resort Association and a critical industry player. Few know whether new CEO Thomas Gallagher will exert himself more in Nevada than Goldberg ever did, or whether he will leave the state to Dodson's stewardship.
Wynn may well assert himself again as he begins to develop the Desert Inn property. But he has lost a worthy foil in Goldberg and the industry is now without its strongest influence on key Democrats in Washington.
If anyone here was still looking for a reason to elect Bush president, they may finally have found it.
archive
