Sunday, July 15, 2007 | 2:31 a.m.
Li sa Mayo De-Riso, who evolved from Erin Kenny's carpooling friend to fulminating foe, sat behind the disgraced former Clark County commissioner at her aborted sentencing hearing Wednesday.
"I must say my heart dropped for a minute as I thought about all the promise that will never be realized," she said, putting aside her feelings of betrayal and remembering how she felt when Kenny was first elected to the commission in 1994.
Amid all the piling on by the media, which have highlighted Kenny's enduring arrogance and ridiculed her vertiginous excuses, and beyond the almost exultant fury displayed by some voters and the always-knowledgeable blog posters, perspective beckons.
Erin Kenny is a crook, she has earned scorn and she has paid and will pay a heavy price - one that will, perhaps, never be heavy enough for some. Yet I feel what I did when I first heard, albeit without much surprise, about her criminality: sadness.
Thanks to a Southern Nevada electorate more and more disgusted with problems that are the province of local government and the seemingly nonstop disclosures of misdeeds and malfeasance, Kenny has become an emblem of arrogance and greed run amok. "Kennyesque" is sure to become a part of the local political lexicon that will not require explanation.
Maybe someday we will know whether this was a story of good intentions twisted by bad influences, or of a financial vise squeezing the worst behavior out of her or, perhaps, of a venal barracuda who fooled a lot of us.
What Mayo De-Riso first liked in Kenny is what I liked, too: She was energetic, smart and passionate. She seemed willing to shake up the bland, milquetoast face of local government - an Establishmentarian, LDS, male visage. She was ruthless, even nasty in that first campaign, though - perhaps a harbinger.
And indeed, instead of a fresh wind blowing through the commission, Kenny became a destructive hurricane. She brazenly shilled for special interests, especially labor. She caused and amplified schisms on the commission. And, we now know, she was wearing a mask of rectitude and righteousness - she once declared at a meeting about ethics, "There are certain things in the world that you accept are blatantly right or blatantly wrong" - while she was secretly two-timing her supporters.
But is Kenny really the Hester Prynne of local corruption?
It's hard to forget she had fellow commissioners as accomplices, witting or not, some in prison and some not. She always needed help, always needed a majority. Although Kenny's crimes went beyond Mike Galardi - and how far we may never know - G-Sting consistently has struck me as more sordid than sensational. Except for Kenny, who may have pocketed hundreds of thousands in bribes, this is about a gang of fairly petty criminals who were willing to sell their public offices cheaply and - this is a seminal point - at a relatively low cost to the community.
I wonder what is worse - the scattered bad zoning decisions a corrupt Kenny was able to inveigle her colleagues to approve or the countless favors for developers that have been done legally by local government bodies and have noticeably worsened the valley's quality of life. What has done more damage to Southern Nevada - Erin Kenny and her gang of thieves or an incestuous political system that allows moneyed interests to insinuate themselves into local government's highest levels?
Frankly, I am not sure Kenny is the worst we have seen - and some of the worst are not in prison.
The most obvious example is Yvonne Atkinson Gates, at one time Kenny's intense rival on the commission and who had a lot in common with her colleague. Atkinson Gates represented the poorest areas of the valley but left them behind as her income soared. She tried to do business with casinos and inserted her cronies into concessions at McCarran International Airport. Like Kenny, Atkinson Gates moved into a luxury home , and she is now under investigation by authorities.
There are other examples, too. But none will be remembered as will Kenny, especially since she invites lampooning with her ongoing six-figure paychecks from developer Jim Rhodes, her claims of vertigo-caused amnesia and her memorable if unfortunate quotes ("I'm on my knees, begging ").
Kenny could have stood for something - a woman with more courage than most of the men she served with, an indefatigable, effective advocate for her constituents. Instead, she stands for only one thing, and her legacy is as a symbol of unfulfilled potential and unquenchable avarice.
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