Berkley’s 1996 advice to Adelson may haunt campaign

Personally, I hoped Congresswoman Shelley Berkley wouldn’t run for U.S. Senate, because I knew it would resurrect unflattering news coverage about secretly recorded audio tapes and memos that made her sound unethical.

Berkley, the one-time government affairs adviser to Las Vegas Sands boss Sheldon Adelson, advised him in 1996 that one way to corral support for his new hotel project (The Venetian) was to offer favors to two Clark County commissioners — Erin Kenny and Yvonne Atkinson-Gates.

She also urged Adelson in memos to make campaign contributions to judges, saying they “tend to help those who helped them.”

All this came out in June 1998, a month after she filed for her first run for the House. Despite the flap, she won her first election comfortably and every election since.

District 3 voters either didn’t know of the 1998 trouble, didn’t care, or thought her advice was pragmatic.

But now she’s in a statewide arena and tapes and memos are expected to be used to define Democrat Berkley to the rest of Nevada.

GOP Congressman Dean Heller probably won’t use the tapes in his ads. He’ll leave the dirty work up to third parties.

The Berkley-Heller race is not going to be just a race between a liberal and a conservative. Berkley is going to have to defend her character, based on the tapes and memos leaked in 1998 to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Berkley urged Adelson to give Commissioner Kenny’s uncle a job and to give Commissioner Atkinson-Gates a daiquiri concession in order to win their support for The Venetian, which would need county approval. “That’s how you could have gotten Erin because she would have been very, very grateful,” she said in May 1997, a few days after Adelson fired her.

Adelson didn’t hire the uncle, and Kenny was later convicted of taking bribes. Berkley never suggested bribing a commissioner. She did say Adelson should give campaign donations to judges for favors. Again, nothing she suggested was illegal, District Attorney Stew Bell said at the time.

What may hurt Berkley the most is that she told different stories about Kenny’s uncle and Atkinson-Gates’ daiquiri business to the Nevada Ethics Committee investigating the two commissioners.

GOP consultant Robert Uithoven doesn’t work for Heller, but does work for Adelson. He agreed with my prediction that the likely ads could be devastating.

“Those kinds of comments will be put in a light where I can’t image anyone in Las Vegas or the rest of the state as viewing them as anything but bad political judgment,” he said.

Actually, there are people who contend that’s just the way the system worked in Las Vegas, then and now, and that Berkley was just offering practical advice.

In a television ad, those tapes in her own distinctive New York accent are going to make Berkley look and sound awful. To Northern Nevadans, they’re going to perpetuate stereotypes about Las Vegans.

Berkley actually handled the controversy well. She answered questions head-on in a tense two-hour interview. Later, she apologized for suggesting judges will do favors for campaign contributions and Clark County commissioners’ votes could be bought with jobs. (We’ve since learned commissioners prefer cash.)

Nor did she hold a grudge against the two journalists who broke the stories —- Jon Ralston and me.

Will the tapes kill her chances?

Maybe not.

“She’s fantastic with constituent services,” Uithoven said. “If she wins, it will be based on her hard work in her district.”

But her advice to Adelson is problematic, Uithoven said. “It’s a distraction she’s going to have to justify.”

Berkley knew this would come up in the Senate race. She must be confident she can win anyway. Her plan to neutralize the ads? Well, that’s still under wraps … until the first attack ad.

Jane Ann Morrison’s column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. E-mail her at Jane@reviewjournal.com or call (702) 383-0275. She also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/morrison.