Former senator and governor recounts his Nevada years

Reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes may have helped save a problem-plagued Las Vegas in the 1960s, former Nevada senator and governor Paul Laxalt believes. But the city Hughes helped resurrect is now faced with the opposite problem - unbridled growth.

Those are just some of the observations from one of the state's most influential political figures in a new autobiography, "Nevada's Paul Laxalt, A Memoir."

The book recounts how the son of Basque immigrants rose from Northern Nevada roots to become governor during one of the state's most critical periods, then moved on to U.S. senator and close adviser to former President Reagan.

The book, scheduled out later this month from a Reno publisher, recounts his long career in state and national politics.

Laxalt, 77, recalls that he never met Hughes, communicating by phone and memorandum with the eccentric billionaire. He served as governor during a period when Hughes swept into Las Vegas, tried to buy just about every hotel-casino on the financially-troubled Strip, then left just as suddenly.

"Those were precarious days," Laxalt recalled in an interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "Las Vegas was going down for the third time; a lot of the (gambling) clubs were floundering and there was enormous pressure from Washington to legislate gambling in Nevada out of existence."

Hughes' arrival was "sort of a Good Housekeeping stamp of approval that if he was willing to invest heavily that maybe Vegas is not all that bad."

Las Vegas is a different story today, with a multibillion-dollar building boom propelling the gambling capital into the world's fastest growing city.

That's not all good, Laxalt believes.

"You look at the traffic, and you look at the crime; I just wonder," he said. "A lot of my Las Vegas friends would love to turn the clock back, but it's too late.

"The northern part of the state went the other way," Laxalt said. "Reno didn't want to be another Vegas. It is not now deemed a gambling community, and I think it's retained a lot of its integrity."

Laxalt has built a prosperous career as a lobbyist in Washington, D.C., where he remained after he retired from the U.S. Senate in 1987. His closeness to Reagan, a friend since the two served as governors of Nevada and California, pushed him into the spotlight as a potential Republican presidential candidate in 1988. The candidacy died when Laxalt admitted he didn't have the "fire in the belly" to pursue a presidential bid.

Laxalt said he is saddened that he has lost contact with Reagan, who is suffering from an advanced stage of Alzheimer's disease.

"Nancy (Reagan) believes we should remember him the way he was, not the way he is now," Laxalt said. "He appealed to me because he was so damn inherently modest. I never heard him brag about anything, even when he became president. He just took it beautifully in stride."

The idea for his book came from annual gatherings with his seven children and 12 grandchildren at the family's picturesque Lake Marlette retreat at Lake Tahoe.

Laxalt ran for the U.S. Senate in 1964, losing to incumbent Sen. Howard Cannon, D-Nev., by 84 votes.

He won the governorship in 1966, left politics to enter the casino business in 1971, then ran for the U.S. Senate in 1974, defeating Democrat Harry Reid, now Nevada's senior senator, by 611 votes.

Top Nevada officials paid tribute to Laxalt in May when a landmark in Carson City, Nev. was named in his honor.

The newly restored 107-year-old former federal building and post office, which now houses the Nevada Commission on Tourism, was named the Paul Laxalt State Building.

"In my public life, I have never traveled very far," said Laxalt, noting that within blocks of the building were his family's home, his mother's Basque restaurant and the buildings where he worked as a lawyer and elected official.

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