With No More Goodmans to Elect, Las Vegas Will Have a Mayoral Runoff

Posted on: June 12, 2024, 10:45h. 

Last updated on: June 12, 2024, 11:06h.

Corey Levitan Read More
Expertise: Commercial Gaming, Entertainment, Expert Insight, Las Vegas, Las Vegas Myths.

With no more Goodmans to elect for mayor, the voting residents of the city of Las Vegas were stumped at the polls on Tuesday.

Carolyn and Oscar Goodman hold each other’s bobbleheads in 2013, during Carolyn’s first term as Las Vegas mayor. (Image: Los Angeles Times)

While 13 candidates ran in the nonpartisan primary to become Sin City’s next big cheese, none received more than 50% of the vote. That means that the top two will square off in a runoff on November 5.

That would be candidates Shelley Berkley and Victoria Seaman.

Neither Shelley Berkley nor Victoria Seaman had the Goodman magic at the polls. (Images: Shelley Berkley, Victoria Seaman)

Berkley, a Democrat, served as a member of the US House of Representatives from 1999 to 2013, and in 2012, ran an unsuccessful campaign for US Senate.

Seaman has served as a Las Vegas City Council member since 2019. Before that, she was a member of the Nevada Assembly from 2014 to 2016, becoming the first Republican Latina elected to the body.

Can’t Keep a Goodman Down

Oscar Goodman plays himself alongside Robert De Niro’s Sam “Ace” Rothstein, a thinly fictionalized Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal, in the 1995 movie “Casino.” (Image: Universal Pictures)

Las Vegas hasn’t been without a Mayor Goodman in 25 years. Both Oscar Goodman and his wife, Caroline, served in the role for three terms each, the maximum allowed.

Oscar began his career as a criminal defense attorney who came to local renown by representing mobsters including Anthony “Tony the Ant” Spilotro, Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal, and Herbert “Fat Herbie” Blitzstein.

Oscar’s local renown went international after Martin Scorsese cast Goodman as himself in his Oscar-nominated 1995 film “Casino.”

Carolyn succeeded her husband as mayor in 2011. Before her political career, she founded The Meadows School, a private K-12 school in Las Vegas’ Summerlin suburb.

Neither Oscar nor Carolyn Goodman ever had to run in a mayoral runoff, since they were always elected by at least 50% of the electorate in every primary.

Mayoral Power Exaggerated

The mayor presides only over the city of Las Vegas, which most tourists know as downtown. Contrary to a persistent myth, the city of Las Vegas includes no part of the Las Vegas Strip, which is located entirely within two unincorporated Clark County townships.

If your entire Las Vegas trip consists of landing at Harry Reid International Airport and staying and playing on the Strip, you’ll never once set foot in the city of Las Vegas.

Since the Strip is the only world-famous part of the Las Vegas Valley, however, the myth is usually perpetuated by the mayors of Las Vegas. They get to put their face on a place over which they have zero authority, attending most major openings and other events and holding press conferences there.

The casinos like the myth, too, since they get to call the addresses of their properties “Las Vegas” without paying any city taxes to be there.

This distinction is largely lost on members of the public and media who don’t reside in Las Vegas, as evidenced by recent coverage Mayor Carolyn Goodman received for throwing shade on the Oakland A’s relocation plans.