7 of Nevada politicians’ most memorable excuses

"Hit things while the iron is hot"

Arberry formed lobbying firm Titan Partners on June 21, 2010, while he was still chairman of the powerful Assembly Ways and Means Committee. He ignored the mandated cooling-off period for legislators to lobby their former colleagues, landing a $100,000 lobbying contract with Clark County judges.

When the deal caused controversy, Arberry explained that law or not, he didn’t believe in cooling-off periods.

“I think you have to hit things while the iron is hot,” he said. “For 25 years I served in the Legislature and in public, and I bring relationships and a lot of knowledge to the table. A cooling-off period hinders an individual. Momentum you have is lost because then you’re not involved in the field.”

Photo by Sam Morris

“That Gay Reber”

It was 1997, a golden age for political corruption in Las Vegas. In October, the Clark County Commission voted to award airport contracts, reserved for disadvantaged businesses, to folks who just happened to be close friends of commissioners.

Then-Commissioner Lance Malone didn’t disclose his friendship with one of the contract recipients. He said he hadn’t recognized the name of one of the recipients, who was a friend of his wife’s.

“I didn’t know it was that Gay Reber,” Malone said, according to the Associated Press. “Had I known it was the same Gay Reber, I would have disclosed and said my wife knows her.”

Photo by Sam Morris/Las Vegas Sun

Brazilian fishing trip

In 2009, as lawmakers debated bills during a floor session, a legislative police officer spotted Assemblyman Ed Goedhart, R-Amargosa Valley, viewing naked women dancing on his computer screen, the Reno Gazette-Journal reported.

Goedhart’s explanation: He had been researching an upcoming fishing trip in Brazil, searching for guides and escorts. He said he clicked on a link in Portuguese and ended up on a nude beach site with pictures of scantily clad women.

“It was not a porn site,” he told the newspaper. “It was not a video. And, it was my own personal computer.”

Photo by John Katsilometes

Mop museum

Mayor Oscar Goodman always had a knack for proposing outrageous things — to move the meter of public opinion (cut off the thumbs of graffiti artists) or because he was simply telling the truth (he’d bring a bottle of gin to a desert island, he told a class of fourth-graders). But Goodman rarely backpedaled, because, well, Oscar could get away with anything, it seemed.

A rare instance, though, came when he first floated the idea of a “mob museum” for Las Vegas. An Italian-American group was so infuriated by the proposal that Goodman claimed he had been misquoted. He said he wanted to start a “mop museum,” he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Childbirth “takes the romance out of a friendship”

Gov. Jim Gibbons’ tenure took one of its many downward turns when, while he was going through a divorce in 2008, he was photographed by the Nevada Appeal newspaper embracing a woman outside the Reno rodeo.

The governor said his relationship with Leslie Durant, formerly Leslie Sferrazza, was not romantic. He had, after all, been in the room when she gave birth.

“You know what, I’ve known Leslie for 20-plus years. In fact, Leslie is a wonderful, dear friend and if they are implying there is anything romantic there, they are wrong,” he told the Sun. “She is helping me get through a very troubling time in my life by being a friend. What troubles me is all these people speculating every time I bump into somebody that happens to be of the opposite sex. You can talk to Leslie, but I think she will tell you if (there’s something that) takes the romance out of a friendship, it’s being there when her child is born. I held her hand when her child was born.

“That’s how close of friends we are.”

Asked if this was romance, he replied, “Absolutely not.”

“I put my arm around her shoulder. I was talking to her. I had to get close because I had to get over the noise of the crowd.”

“If I had assaulted her, there would be far more damage to her”

Rob Lauer was the Republican nominee challenging incumbent Secretary of State Ross Miller in 2008. But he had a blemish on his record: He was accused of assaulting a GOP activist and fundraiser at a bar just before he won the primary.

But he had a number of explanations for the Sun, all of them memorable.

Lauer said she was drunk and had grabbed his buttocks.

The woman was “the one making a big drama out of nothing.”

He said he was also showing her “how a weaker individual can remove the hand of someone stronger. It was basically a dance twirl.”

She had offered to help him raise money, which would make his assault preposterous, he said. “What politician out there would attack someone offering to raise money for them?” Lauer said.

He continued: “If I had assaulted her, there would be far more damage to her, as a combat soldier with five years of training in the Army.”

Also, this: “She never said no. She never resisted. By that definition, it was never an assault. If there was an injury, it was merely an accident, not assault.”

Lauer lost his election bid.

Photo by Sam Morris

“I’m not sure that those are Latinos”

Former Assemblywoman Sharron Angle, running against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in 2010, provided a number of explanations that could have made the list. But the most memorable came as she defended an ad attacking her opponent on illegal immigration. The ad appeared to feature some ominous-looking young Latinos.

But maybe not, Angle said.

She wasn’t taking many questions from the media. So it was a Las Vegas high school class that captured her explanation of the ad.

A student asked why the U.S. Senate candidate would portray illegal immigrants in a frightening way.

Angle questioned whether the scary young men in her campaign ad were Latinos and whether it was raising questions about security on the nation’s southern border. “I think that you’re misinterpreting those commercials. I’m not sure that those are Latinos in that commercial,” she told the class. “What it is, is a fence and there are people coming across that fence. What we know is that our northern border is where the terrorists came through. That’s the most porous border that we have.”

Later, she told the predominantly Hispanic student group: “I don’t know that all of you are Latino. Some of you look a little more Asian to me.”

Later she added to the awkwardness: “I’ve been called the first Asian legislator in our Nevada state Assembly.”