Citizen Hughes - Michael Drosnin [64]
“I want you to convince Laxalt that he can count on me to prevent the President or anybody from damaging the reputation of Nevada Gaming, which I want to be treated like the New York Stock Exchange.”
Right. And now for the hook.
“But, if I am to fulfill this promise, I must have the support of the Governor and his Gaming Commission.
“Bob, there will never be another opportunity like the one existing today to pick up an additional one or two casinos and to satisfy this crying drive inside of me against what I consider the many unfair competitive inroads—the competitive build up.
“It would only take the acquisition of a very few additional casinos plus the elimination of these same casinos from the competitive group—in other words, just a small tipping of the scales—a small addition to one side of the scale and a small elimination from the weight resting on the competitive side—just a small change in the balance, and I would be satisfied.”
On April 30, 1968, Hughes got the support of the governor and his gaming commission. It approved the billionaire’s purchase of the Silver Slipper and his planned purchase of the Stardust, granting him his fifth and sixth casino licenses, a small tipping of the scales that made him the undisputed king of gambling. He was not satisfied.
The vote was not unanimous. Two commissioners had dared to challenge his sovereignty. “It is obvious from the vote that there is considerable serious concern over the extent of your acquisitions,” reported his lawyer, Richard Gray. “I do not believe we will be permitted to control so much of the economy of this state no matter what our intentions are.”
Hughes was outraged. “I know God-damned well that people would not be making money around here as if they had a printing press if I had turned south out of Boston and gone to the Bahamas, as I almost did,” he fumed. “They should have some gratitude for the fairy-godfather who pulled their chestnuts out of the fire, the same fairy-godfather who started the whole ball rolling.”
If Hughes didn’t quite see himself as the new Godfather of Las Vegas, he did feel that as its “fairy-godfather” he was entitled to own it all. The casinos. The hotels. The politicians. Everything.
He saw himself as bringing the best of American capitalism to what had been an underworld money-laundry, but in a real sense Hughes was less part of the established order, more hidden, than the Mob. And he was also more corrupt. The mobsters were content to run the casinos and skim the take, while Hughes demanded absolute control over the entire state, driven to purify Nevada by corrupting it completely.
His latest acquisition, the Silver Slipper, now became on odd fixture of Nevada politics. Its neon-lit high-heeled slipper revolving on top of a twenty-foot pole just across the Strip from the Desert Inn became a beacon for local statesmen. They flocked to the Hughes-owned casino next door, the Frontier, where his bagman Thomas Bell—law partner of the governor’s brother—handed out hundred-dollar bills drawn from the cashier’s cage at the Slipper.
Over the next three years, $858,500 passed from the gaming tables of the Silver Slipper to Nevada politicians, always in hundred-dollar bills, always in cash. There was hardly a political race Hughes didn’t finance. He instructed Bell to support the likely winner, regardless of party or politics, and back both candidates if the race was too close to call. United States Senator Alan Bible got at least $50,000, his colleague Senator Howard Cannon got $70,000, Lieutenant Governor Harry Reid $10,000, Attorney General Robert List $9,500, District Attorney George Franklin $5,000, and twenty-seven state-legislature candidates trooped into Bell’s office to collect a total of $56,000. Judges and sheriffs and assorted commissioners all came by and left with cash-filled envelopes.
From time to time, Governor Laxalt himself visited Bell to solicit contributions from the Silver Slipper slush fund. At Laxalt’s request the state Republican chairman got $15,000, and the governor urged