Citizen Hughes - Michael Drosnin [91]
By the late sixties it no longer seemed possible to ignore. Not even in Las Vegas. Federal courts ordered the classrooms integrated and bills were introduced in the state legislature to end discrimination in housing as well.
Hughes was aghast.
“Do you have any report from the people in Carson City re the civil rights or fair housing legislation?” he demanded. “I just heard one TV news report that stated the latest fair housing bill is the very most extreme anywhere in the U.S. That sounds pretty frightening.”
His lobbyists in the state capital went to work, and two weeks later Maheu had good news: “Howard, Tom Bell was successful in knocking out the Fair Housing Bill in its entirety.” But even Bell, law partner of the governor’s brother and the billionaire’s paymaster to Nevada lawmakers, could not so easily end the threat.
Within another two weeks, a new—albeit, far weaker—housing bill was introduced, this one ostensibly backed by Governor Laxalt himself. Hughes was both shocked and enraged:
“Bob, what is this about Laxalt’s open housing bill? I thought he was a friend and I thought Bell had told him how I feel about that issue.”
How could the governor so callously ignore the wishes of the state’s leading citizen? Had Hughes not been generous? And just to take care of thirty thousand blacks, who probably never contributed a dime. Hughes fired off a second memo to Maheu, this time enclosing evidence of the governor’s perfidy:
“Please read all—every word—of this article. This worries me. If Laxalt goes this far in his leaning toward benefits favoring the colored race, it may influence other legislation.
“What worries me most is that I am just hovering on the brink of further huge investments in Nevada, and Laxalt’s friendship is an important part of this decision.
“If Laxalt knows I dont want this legislation, and he goes ahead and pushes it anyway, that is peculiar friendship.
“It says in this article that the bill would not pass except for Laxalt’s urging.
“Please call him or ask Bell to contact him at once. It may be impossible to reach him in the AM and tomorrow may be too late.… I would like to go ahead with all my Nevada plans, but this worries me a great deal.…”
Just in case the governor was not moved by the promise of new investments, or the implied threat of not making them, Hughes now offered the real bait to bring the normally obliging statesman back to his senses:
“You may send Laxalt through Bell absolutely unlimited assurances of unlimited financial support. He does not need the colored vote and I want him to know this loud and clear!”
Apparently the message got through. Loud and clear. Maheu reported the victory to his boss later that day, April 16, 1969:
“Tom Bell just called to inform they have just definitely killed the open housing bill. He wanted you to know that Laxalt was very ‘quietly’ helpful in accomplishing this. In other words Howard, he delivered to Tom the critical vote which enabled Bell to kill it in committee.”
Very quietly indeed. The local press reported a far different story: “Governor Paul Laxalt’s fair-housing bill was killed in the Senate Finance Committee Wednesday by a 4–3 vote. It was one of the first major defeats of Laxalt in the ’69 legislature.”
In the bitter debate that preceded the committee vote, one of the bill’s supporters warned that Nevada was courting another Watts. State Senator James Slattery, one of the lawmakers who came to Hughes’s rescue (and who had received $2,500 from the billionaire), responded: “If they’d had the guts to go in with machine guns and kill two or three hundred in Watts, you wouldn’t have had it. They were breaking the law.”
Apparently, Hughes himself also failed to heed the warning. A few months later he was once again trying to hold back the waves. This time by standing in the schoolhouse door.
“I just heard the ch 8 program re integration, and this