EDITORIAL: Mayor Carolyn Goodman shoots from lip; sustains self-inflicted wound

Carolyn Goodman is putting to the test the maxim that any publicity is good publicity.

The lame duck Las Vegas mayor has left no doubt where she stands in the raging — and now partisan — debate about how much economic damage Nevada and the country can tolerate in order to limit coronavirus deaths. She has called business shutdowns “insanity” from the get-go and accused the media of fanning fears about the pandemic.

On Wednesday, Ms. Goodman went national, appearing on CNN in an interview with Anderson Cooper. She held steadfast to her controversial perspective and downplayed the significance of the virus. It didn’t go well.

Among other things, the mayor argued for an immediate end to business shutdowns, including on the Strip (which is out of her jurisdiction) and said it was up to business owners to determine how to ensure social distancing. She gave little weight to testing and said that by opening now Las Vegas could serve as an experiment on the efficacy of the restrictions imposed to fight the illness.

The ridicule was fast and furious, as many Southern Nevadans understandably perceived her comments as callous and bizarre.

There are, in fact, reasonable arguments on both sides concerning the appropriate balance between minimizing virus deaths and ending the lockdowns and business closures that have paralyzed the nation. But Ms. Goodman’s “let it rip” approach is as misguided as the “if it saves one life” equivalent on the opposite end of the spectrum. In fact, nobody — not even the “experts” — truly knows the proper way to proceed, but proceed we must. There is no alternative, and, absent a cure, any reopening at any time will trigger more infections.

“People won’t stay cooped up indefinitely,” Daniel Henninger of The Wall Street Journal observed this week. “As to the virus itself,” he added, “it’s impossible to keep regarding it as an unstoppable daily plague. It has to become something we can grasp.”

If the mayor seeks to push Las Vegas toward that end, she does herself no favors by playing the fool for the world to see. Instead, she should dive into the deep end and cooperate with Southern Nevada leaders to set the stage for the gradual resuscitation of the local economy. A good first step would be for Ms. Goodman to meet with local business owners, from small proprietors to casino chiefs, to learn what they need to comfortably and safely resume operations. Next up should be get-togethers with workers — particularly in the hospitality industry — to gauge their appetite for returning.

Despite her clumsy presentation, Ms. Goodman’s instincts are understandable: We all crave normal times. But leadership and her legacy require that the mayor temper her contrarian venting in favor of crafting a realistic solution to get the city moving again.