Putting New Spin on Sin City, Las Vegas Woos G.O.P
Putting New Spin on Sin City, Las Vegas Woos G.O.P. for 2016 Convention
LAS VEGAS — Almost every imaginable convention has found its way to the Strip. There have been gatherings devoted to electronics, pizza, computers, kitchen equipment and concrete — not to mention guns, butter and pornography. But in the more than a century that there has been a Las Vegas, the city has never hosted a national political convention. Republicans and Democrats have kept their distance from a place that proudly has claimed the mantle of Sin City.
Now a group of Las Vegas civic leaders and Republican donors — among them, Sheldon G. Adelson, a casino owner who spent at least $98 million on Republican candidates in 2012 — are out to change that by starting a campaign to persuade the party to bring its 2016 convention to the Las Vegas Strip.
“Vegas has pitched us earlier and more aggressively than any city since I’ve been on the committee,” said Henry Barbour of Mississippi, who has been a committee member since 2005, as he recounted daily calls, emails and face-to-face conversations with the team that calls itself LV2016.
*A group of Las Vegas civic leaders and Republican donors are starting a campaign to persuade the party to bring its 2016 convention to the Las Vegas Strip. Monica Almeida/The New York Times
* A dealer at a card table at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas in January. Casino gambling — once confined to Las Vegas and Atlantic City — is losing its stigma, particularly when it can be found across the country. Monica Almeida/The New York Times
The prospect of the Republican Party, which for more than a generation has been identified with Christian conservatives and moral causes, choosing its next president on the Strip comes as Las Vegas is entering a new middle age, eager to broaden its identification beyond gambling, sex, alcohol and everything else that puts the sin in Sin City.
“There’s sin everywhere — we all know that,” the city’s mayor, Carolyn Goodman, a Republican-turned-Democrat-turned-independent, said as she sat in her vast corner office. “The thing is, we are in close proximity to top five-star dining, top shopping. And the most important thing: the weather.”
Las Vegas also has the allure of being in a state, Nevada, that is an electoral battleground and one that Republicans would like to reclaim after losing the last two presidential elections. And it has a Latino population of 30 percent, an important consideration for a party that has seen its support among Latino voters drop over the years.
Though the city was built on gambling revenue, the Las Vegas 2016 team is methodically trying to play down that aspect of the city. A slick video, sent to members and posted on its website, boasts of golf courses, restaurants, luxury-suite hotels, a Nascar track, 531 houses of worship and nearby natural wonders, like the Hoover Dam and Grand Canyon National Park, “a short helicopter ride away.” There is not a single image of dice or slot machines. Reinvention is not new to the city, which has embarked on more than one effort over the years to be seen as family friendly, though this is the first effort at rebranding with a political twist.
The people behind the campaign include political advisers and casino owners — among them, Mr. Adelson and Stephen A. Wynn — as well as lobbyists for Caesars Casino and MGM. They have hired Washington political strategists and put former Republican National Committee aides and members on retainer. The strategy evokes a Washington lobbying campaign in which a business group would hire lobbyists who previously worked for a member of Congress they are seeking to influence.
The Las Vegas advocates, for example, have brought on Wells Griffith, who previously was the aide-de-camp to Reince Priebus, the national Republican chairman. (In an indication of the group’s appetite for Washington-style message control, Mr. Griffith sent an email on Tuesday to the Las Vegas team noting that reporters had been “asking questions about LV2016 operations” and reminding them about “the Non-Disclosure Agreements in everyone’s contract.”)
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This organization, at least so far, goes beyond anything that has been revealed by any of its competitors, among them Kansas City, Mo. A “whip team” assigns individual lobbyists to work on specific members of the Republican National Committee. The team has sent out emails making an argument of the day for Las Vegas for nearly 50 consecutive days, and — befitting a political campaign — is beginning to make disparaging remarks about potential competitors.
*The Las Vegas Convention Center is not an arena and would require some major construction to make it work for the convention. Monica Almeida/The New York Times
“That is one thing Las Vegas can guarantee: There will be no hurricanes,” said Brian K. Krolicki, the Republican lieutenant governor of Nevada, invoking the memory of when Hurricane Isaac forced a schedule change during the Republican convention in 2012, held in Tampa, Fla.
The turn of events suggests that casino gambling — once confined to Las Vegas and Atlantic City — is losing its stigma, particularly when it can be found across the country: on riverboats, at county casinos and on Indian reservations.
“We are world renowned for our hospitality and, you know, our gaming industry,” Mr. Krolicki said over coffee at the Orleans Hotel & Casino on a recent morning. “But I think with the proliferation of gaming through the United States, gaming is part of the fabric of almost every community. It’s just an issue that is no longer on the table.”
Charles Spies, a Washington lawyer who works for Mr. Wynn, was more direct about the opposition, noting there are 14 casinos in the metropolitan Kansas City area.
The evolution of Nevada to political respectability began eight years ago when Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader, persuaded the party to hold early caucuses here in 2008, which was followed by a Republican presidential debate four years later.
One appeal of Las Vegas, with its 150,000 hotel rooms within one square mile, is its contrast with the comparatively hotel-starved Tampa, where delegates complained of how long it took to get from their rooms to the convention center.
“Our delegation experienced three-hour round trips to the convention site in Tampa, so potentially walking to every event is exciting,” said Matt Moore, the South Carolina Republican chairman.
* Sheldon Adelson, a casino owner, is part of a group of Las Vegas civic leaders and Republican donors who have started a campaign to persuade the Republican party to bring its 2016 convention to the Las Vegas Strip. Jason Reed/Reuters
But there are obstacles. The Las Vegas Convention Center is not an arena and would require some major construction to make it work for the convention. MGM is building an arena on the Strip that could work, though it is not certain it would be completed in time.
In the past, business leaders in Las Vegas said political conventions were financial losers, tying up hotels and traffic during busy late summer months, said Billy Vassiliadis, spokesman for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. “At the end of the day, for Las Vegas it’s a business decision — not a philosophical decision.”
But this time, Mr. Vassiliadis said, the fact that the convention was likely to take place earlier in the summer made it much more attractive. “A week of national news coming out of Las Vegas — that’s never a bad thing.”
Still, the biggest obstacle Las Vegas might face is Las Vegas. For all the posters for family-oriented shows — you can still catch Donny and Marie Osmond at the Flamingo — there are plenty of strip clubs and hawkers on Las Vegas Boulevard promising “girls-girls-girls.” A road running by the new City Hall is lined by huge billboards advertising bail bondsmen, a particularly lucrative local industry. There is a huge poster advertising the restaurant opened by Oscar Goodman — a former mayor, and the current mayor’s husband — that promises “beef booze and broads.”
“It’s Vegas — it’s known for anything but wholesome,” said Tamara Scott, a Christian conservative and Iowa’s Republican committee chairwoman. “I have reservations as soon as I hear the word Vegas.”
Even Republicans who argue that Las Vegas has moved beyond that said they are worried about the prospect of mocking news coverage of Republicans frolicking on the Strip.
“It screams opportunity for YouTubes of your average convention-goer who does something stupid and makes it look like all these Republicans are in Vegas and they are all raising hell,” said Mr. Barbour, who nevertheless described himself as very open to having the convention there.
Mr. Vassiliadis said the that tawdry image of Las Vegas had been overtaken by the state’s rising political prominence. “You had Barack Obama here eight or 10 times,” he said. “You had Mitt Romney here. That kind of said — ‘Hey, Vegas is all right.’ ”
Mr. Spies and other Las Vegas lobbyists will descend on a Washington hotel this week to make their case to Republicans, who are holding their winter meeting in the capital and will choose the site-selection committee. But don’t look for boozy parties, showgirls or any of the other signs of the old Vegas. Rather, they are hosting an Internet lounge and setting up meetings with libations not much stronger than coffee to press their case.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/24/us/politics/las-vegas-seeks-to-host-the-gop-in-2016.html?hp&_r=0