Stupak's Bad Beat

I want to apologize to Bob Stupak, because I probably blew his chances of becoming lieutenant governor of Nevada – along with David Sklansky's opportunity to be appointed the state's official "Poker Wizard." After Stupak announced his candidacy and ran a campaign ad in Card Player, I wrote a column urging everyone to vote for him. Had it run before the primary elections, the flamboyant showman, former casino owner, and professional poker player undoubtedly would have won the Democratic nomination in a landslide. However, I submitted the column too late to meet the magazine's deadline for the issue before the primaries. So while Stupak got a respectable 17 percent of the vote, he still finished third in a four-man race. Even so, he did a lot better than his former girlfriend, Janet Moncrief, who got less than 4 percent, running as a Republican candidate.



It might seem odd for me to endorse a professional gambler for state office, but what was the big deal? We have a former mob lawyer as mayor of Las Vegas, and a porn star even ran for governor. This, after all, is Nevada, not Mormon Utah.



My main reason for supporting Stupak, though, was that I owe him a debt of gratitude for building the Stratosphere Tower. My problem (OK, one of my problems) is that I have no sense of direction whatsoever. I have difficulty finding my way out of a casino men's room, let alone out of the casino itself. I need a radar detector or a trained dog sniffer to find my car in the parking lot. I suppose I could valet park, but those 25-cent tips add up. And, when it came to driving around town, fuhgeddabout it, as John Bonetti would say. It's bad enough negotiating the Strip, where a familiar landmark casino is blown up every week to be replaced by some new and confusing megaresort. But once I got into any other area of town, I got totally turned around and had to call the Auto Club for help.



Then came the Stratosphere, strategically located midway between the Strip and Downtown. Stretching about five miles up into the sky, it now affords me a point of reference to regain my bearings. Every city should have one of those things.



So, when Stupak threw his hat into the political arena, I wished him the best, even though I hadn't a clue what a lieutenant governor is supposed to do. As far as I knew, his only job is to phone the state capitol every morning to see if the governor had died. If not, then he could go back to sleep.



However, Stupak explained that in Nevada, the lieutenant governor's duties include chairing the Nevada Commission on Tourism, whose job it is to promote tourism and aid economic development. Stupak, who gained fame as an innovative promoter when he owned Vegas World, and who has had numerous TV appearances and publication write-ups, would have been an ideal choice for this position. He is a man who thinks big. To illustrate, a number of years ago he decided to give up smoking. Anyone else looking to quit would simply buy a nicotine patch. That wasn't good enough for him. To pressure himself, he took out a billboard on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles (perhaps elsewhere, too), offering to pay about $200,000 to anyone who caught him smoking! The ploy might not have worked, because sometime later, I spotted him smoking up a storm in a casino, but he sure gave it both barrels.



To be honest, though, while I don't know much about the rest of the state, I sometimes wonder how much more tourism Vegas can handle. Driving along the Strip (crawling, to be more accurate) is a nightmare now. The price of gas what it is, it costs about $2 to inch your way one block. I wonder what it will be like when all those gigantic condos, the ones with prices starting in the low billions, are built. One suggestion I would offer would be to ban all those mobile billboards advertising casino acts and "gentlemen's clubs" that endlessly drive up and down Las Vegas Boulevard, further clogging traffic. Who needs to have a 50-foot "Hot Babes" billboard blocking your way? Once, I saw not one, not two, but three mobile billboards for comedian George Wallace parading in tandem up the Strip. Wallace may be funny, but traffic jams ain't.



Also, I wonder if Stupak, had he gained office, would have used his influence to do something about another of my peeves. In several areas of the Strip, you have to walk a gauntlet between rows of scruffy street people shoving strip club and "dating service" porno cards in your face. It must cost the city a fortune to clean up all those photo cards that end up littering the street every day. And they can be very dangerous as well. I once was nearly killed when my sweetie found a pile of them in my hotel drawer.



Anyway, Stupak is a top poker player with numerous accomplishments, including a World Series of Poker bracelet in deuce-to-seven lowball, and it would have been great to have an understanding poker pro in a position of power. Maybe he could have gotten some much-needed laws passed, like making the throwing of cards a misdemeanor, slow-rolling a felony, and telling bad-beat stories a mandatory death sentence.



I was intrigued to read in Stupak's campaign ad that if elected, he would appoint David Sklansky as "Resident Wizard" of Nevada, to help "better represent the poker community." Wizard? David, I know a few people I sure would have liked to see you wave your wand at and make them vanish. In any event, "Wizard" sounds like King Arthur's Court. If that was to be the setup, maybe Stupak could have appointed me as official court jester. Some other appointments might have included Ham Gristle as ambassador of goodwill and Bonetti as head of the English department at UNLV.



Speaking of education, I would have liked to see Stupak make Poker 101 a required course in Nevada schools. Think about it. Just this one class would educate students not only in mathematics, but also in psychology, finance, and anger management.



Another suggestion would be to change a couple of Nevada's official symbols. The official state bird of Nevada is the mountain bluebird, the official animal is the desert bighorn sheep, and the official flower is the sagebrush. That's fine. But the official state fish is the lahontan cutthroat trout. Shouldn't it be the out-of-town tourist? And maybe Ralph the Rattler could be named the official reptile to replace the desert tortoise.



In return for my support and great ideas, I would have asked Stupak one small favor: to make Omaha eight-or-better the official state poker game.



Oh, well. Sorry, Bob. Look me up in four years and we'll give it another go.