Citizen Hughes - Michael Drosnin [60]
“Any time you will tell me to go ahead,” he informed Maheu, “I am prepared to make a personal phone call to Laxalt and tell him it is my desire that he remain governor and that I promise unlimited support for this campaign, and, further, that should he fail to be elected governor for another term, I want him to accept a position in private industry which I know will meet his requirements, no matter how extreme they may be.
“I am positive I can sell this to Laxalt.
“Please call the Governor and simply tell him that I wanted to be sure he understands that I do want him to become one of the very top executives of my company.”
Maheu was soon sending Hughes regular progress reports on the secret job negotiations:
“I had a very fine meeting with the Governor. I truly believe that I can convince him to join your organization permanently as a top executive in charge of all your Nevada operations or anywhere else you may choose to assign him.”
“Governor Laxalt has started to ask me precisely what his assignment will be in your organization,” Maheu reported a few weeks later, as Hughes stalled on the details.
The talks dragged on for years, and the governor continued dickering for a job almost the entire time he remained in office. As late as June 1970, Maheu noted: “Laxalt is very anxious to discuss his future employment with us and I really believe we owe him the courtesy of sitting down with him at a very early date.”
Rather than accept the job Hughes kept dangling just out of reach, however, Maheu speculated that the governor would instead rejoin his family law firm, which received at least $180,000 from the billionaire while Laxalt was in office.
“My guess is that he will hit us for a retainer with the understanding that we have priority on all of his time but allow him to build a law practice at the same time,” Maheu reported after another meeting with the governor.
Ultimately Laxalt would send Hughes a handwritten letter suggesting his availability as a private attorney, but noting that the long-discussed job would be such a blatant conflict of interest that he dare not go directly on the billionaire’s payroll.
“Dear Howard,” wrote the governor as he prepared to leave the statehouse, “… I fear that a direct contract relationship with you might be misinterpreted. I would dislike, as would you, to have anyone think that the cooperation of our administration with you during the past four years was on a ‘quid pro quo’ basis.…
“I’ve decided to open a law office in Carson City.… If you should ever have need of any assistance from me, I’ll be happy to provide it.”
Almost immediately upon leaving office, Laxalt did in fact start collecting legal fees from Hughes that would total at least $72,000.
But all that was far in the future as Hughes plotted early in 1968 to expand his domain. With the governor no longer a problem, Hughes began to present himself as a benefactor to the other citizens of Nevada. He would build the world’s largest hotel in Las Vegas, a spectacular one-hundred-and-fifty-million-dollar resort, “a complete city within itself.” He would create the world’s greatest airport in the Nevada desert, make it the new “gateway to the West,” and build a high-speed railway to whisk passengers from the Jet Air Terminal to downtown Las Vegas. He would endow a new medical school for the University of Nevada, promising “$200,000 to $300,000 per year for 20 years.” He would bring new industry to the state, indeed he would move the Hughes Tool Company and the Hughes Aircraft Company and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to Nevada, make it the headquarters of his entire empire.
In fact, the only thing Hughes would actually ever build in Nevada was Maheu’s new mansion, and indeed he would do his best to block all new hotels, all new industry, all “competition.” But as each day brought some fresh report of Hughes’s intended good works, nobody seemed ready