My farewell to Oscar

By Jon Ralston

Friday, June 17, 2011 | 2:01 a.m.

Dear Oscar,

I am going to miss you.

Really, I mean that. I have covered many, many politicians in 25 years and no one is even close to the performer you are. And by performer, I mean you have played the role of Happiest Mayor in the Universe so well that it obscures your darker side that resurfaced this week, as it occasionally does. Not to worry, though, my dear Oscar: The incandescence you have brought to downtown blots out any clouds of negativity. And you abhor bad weather.

Indeed, you will not let anyone criticize you without bringing the full force of your volcanic and thuggish temper down on them. I am not the only one to have seen it, but I remember my favorite line at one of your news conferences when you told me why you wouldn’t answer one of my questions: “With all due respect, I have no respect for you.”

I quivered and shut up. Or you walked out of the news conference. I forget which.

And you couldn’t get me out of your head this final week, old friend, as you obliquely referred to me as a “misanthropic miscreant” for raising questions about The Greatest Deal Ever Made, the one that is bringing Zappos downtown (maybe), the one that epitomized how you turned City Hall into Roundheels Central.

For the record, Oscar, I do not hate my fellow man the way you hate all who criticize or even question you. Nor am I a miscreant — or at least certainly not compared with the clients who made you a very rich man.

I hope the Zappos deal transforms downtown into the pulsating core of energy you envision. But there is absolutely no evidence that will happen, other than the usual leap of faith you took by entrusting a developer, Andrew Donner, who has yet to deliver on his promises at the Lady Luck. And the way the city handled the reconfigured deal, which will cost Las Vegas taxpayers $7 million from what they could have had, should rightly make people suspicious.

The city sent out an email June 9 to the news media headlined, “Zappos Expansion Release,” which was not so much about a promise of 2,000 employees but an attempt to justify a nearly 30 percent discount for Donner to buy the old City Hall. What you didn’t tell anyone was two days earlier you received an email from Zappos threatening to pull out of The Greatest Deal Ever Made unless it became an even better deal for the company.

I acknowledge that we won’t know for years whether reducing the price and doing whatever Donner and Zappos want is the right thing for the city. But I know that anyone who tried to drive a hard bargain at City Hall didn’t last long over there, did they, mayor?

Your philosophy has been simple: Developers won’t easily come downtown, so it’s fine to give away the store, even if the store is owned by taxpayers. If it’s good for Oscar Goodman, it’s good for Las Vegas.

You are a salesman par excellence, as good at hawking the hardest-to-sell-downtown of any major city as you were selling the innocence of killers. That, old friend, is undeniable. Will it pay off in the long run? We’ll see.

If John Gotti was the Teflon Don, you have been the Teflon Mayor. No one could have gotten away with what you did — like a mobster getting off because Oscar Goodman was his lawyer.

The classless insults to other public figures. The gin story to fourth-graders. The abhorrent treatment of loyal staffers. And so much more.

When you faced an ethics complaint for helping your son’s business by setting him up at the U.S. Conference of Mayors, you responded with a positively Nixonian turn at an impromptu news conference by saying, “I’m going to run the city the way I want to run the city.” Huzzah!

Or, more recently, when you told the Sun’s Delen Goldberg the city paid for that robocall late in the mayor’s race, which the city said wasn’t true, and then you said the campaign paid for it. That is great stuff, Mayor. No one can change positions as quickly as you can. Then, just this week, you dismissed any concerns about welcoming a rave from Los Angeles where last year there were hundreds of medical emergencies, dozens of drug arrests and a 15-year-old died of an Ecstasy overdose.

Your reaction, Mayor? “If people are going to be idiots, you can’t stop them.”

Mayors, too, I suppose.

Farewell, Oscar. I hope the new mayor lets you invest downtown with that speak-easy you dream of. Good luck in all of your future endeavors,

Your favorite misanthropic miscreant.