KNPR contributor John L. Smith is back after a little time off during the holiday season, and he’s resolved to give us a pair of intriguing stories this week.
The first involves what some gaming industry experts might call a highly unlikely bromance.
It involves long-time corporate casino resort enemies Steve Wynn and President Elect Donald Trump. They’ve battled in the press and in litigation off and on for three decades. But now they appear the best of buddies.
Trump even selected Wynn and fellow casino titan Sheldon Adelson to take part in the party planning for the upcoming inauguration.
DISCUSSION HIGHLIGHTS
Tell us more about this bromance?
It really begins when Steve Wynn decides to expand outside Las Vegas and get into the Atlantic City market. Donald Trump was from a real estate family and was considered the shining star in Atlantic City. But when Wynn got there, he brought Frank Sinatra with him. He was immediately successful. Really rang the bell and really redefined the experience. Why? Steve Wynn was raised in the racket. He really knows how to run a joint.
And Trump’s career has always been defined as promoting what he has and moving on to the next thing very quickly. Trump is, of course, involved in six corporate bankruptcies in his career. Four directly tied to Atlantic City.
So there was that dynamic and Trump didn’t like that. And it got worse from there.
For several years the Trump and Wynn organizations were locked in nasty litigation, but then it all got settled. What happened?
Around the late 90s, Wynn is considering - after leaving Atlantic City - he’s considering going back with a really flashy project on the back bay. He’s really going to redefine the Atlantic City experience and he runs into trouble. Who’s providing the trouble? He believes Donald Trump is slowing him down.
There is a series of litigation. A series of interference litigation. In which, it gets so negative that both sides through their attorneys hire private investigators to essentially dig up dirt on the other. They use things like surveillance and tape recorders in brief cases - and at one point a tape recorder in a jockstrap - to really develop whatever they could find to harm the other party.
It eventually settles and I believe – truly to this day – it settled because so much information, so much negative was contained in the documents in the run up to the evidentiary hearing that if they hadn’t settled it they probably would have burned both companies down.
Is it possible that these two are now cozying up because they realize how much alike they are?
It is interesting you say that because they do have a lot of personality traits that are similar. Although there was a time when neither probably would have admitted that. Wynn was an early supporter of Trump - 1) because he really was a critic of the Obama Administration. 2) he likes Trump’s focus on business, on tax breaks, on promising to repeal Obamacare. Those are the things that Wynn had come out publically and said, ‘This needs to happen.’ That this was a dumb health care plan and it needs to be repealed. So, when Trump said that, Wynn actually, without endorsing him totally, Wynn said he makes a good point and at least he has the courage to say it.
You’ve been talking to lawmakers from rural areas about the things that are important to them the upcoming legislative session. What are you hearing?
These lawmakers to a great degree really embody the Nevada concept of citizen legislators. So, I’m in conversation with Pete Goicoechea the other day. Now, Pete is a Diamond Valley rancher, which is near Eureka, for 30 or 40 years now and really a true conservative. He is a man of the land. He goes as what I consider a reasonable Nevada conservative not a wingnut.
They are very much focused on water rights in the coming session. The individual ownership of water in Nevada is always a big issue. I think it’s going to be a bigger issue this year than in previous years. There is a focus depending on who you are speaking with about the Education Savings Accounts. Because that kind of symbolizes a change in the guard in public education.
Goicoechea brings up a great point areas where the geographic is really, really vast things like transportation, road bills, are very, very important. Those secondary routes that folks don’t travel on unless they live out in the country. They still need to be maintained and they’re very important in the part of Nevada.
And there is some fear in the rurals because of some substantial changes in Southern Nevada’s growth and use of road funds that their projects might be put on the backburner. That’s something of concern to them.
They’re also concerned about the availability of healthcare in their county.
Spoke with James Settelmeyer, another rancher who represents people outside of Reno. He is a more conservative legislature. One of the younger conservatives in the State Senate. He is also focused on those water issues. He’s more focused on ESAs and trying to bring it into constitutional status.
I went a little further south and talked with State Sen. Don Gustavson, who’s right there in Nye County. These guys all represent big space, but they all come back to the same thing. You would think there would be many, many things in common and certainly there are in Nevada, but they are also very focused on, for instance, the trapping law in Nevada.
We don’t get up in the morning thinking about trapping all that much. But in the rurals, some of the senators, some of the legislators think that the law was changed to the detriment of ranching. So, they’re going to go back out during the session and try to amend it and make it a little more rancher friendly.
John L. Smith, contributor
