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THE HANGOVER HALL OF FAME
latest pick:
Oscar Goodman, mayor of Las Vegas
"I do think this country needs a president who drinks"
By Jesse McKinley
LAS VEGAS: For the record, the mayor of Las Vegas, Oscar Goodman, likes his martinis made with a big cup of gin, on the rocks, and a couple of garlic- stuffed olives. Vermouth need not apply, and don't even talk to him about vodka.
That, in sum, was the lesson to be learned on a recent Tuesday night in a community college class ‹ "How to Make a Martini with the Mayor" ‹ that might be possible only in a city where placards advertise "Breakfast and Margaritas" and where last call is a poker term, not a bartender's threat.
"I am an expert in martinis," said Goodman, a 67-year-old Democrat who calls himself "the happiest mayor in the world."
"If I could finish all the gin I have in my home," he said, "I would live to be about 3,000 years old."
Indeed, while politicians and pop stars spend time running to rehab, Goodman has made his love of drink a central element in a very successful public persona. A former criminal defense lawyer who made a fortune representing mobsters and their henchmen, Goodman is regularly seen at public events with a martini in hand, often flanked by a cadre of showgirls.
Editorial cartoonists invariably add a cocktail glass to their sketches of the mayor, a feature also included in a Mayor Goodman bobble-head doll that he handed out at a U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting held here last June. In 2002, Goodman even took an endorsement deal from Bombay Sapphire gin, an arrangement that raised some eyebrows even though the mayor donated his $100,000 fee to charity.
All of which, he says, is simply a way of connecting with constituents in a city known for its belief in the virtue of vice.
"Las Vegas is a party town," Goodman said. "And I believe that people are supposed to have fun here. And unless you have some sort of religious compunction against drinking, that's part of our fabric."
For all that, Goodman says he drinks in moderation, despite presiding over a city where some bars stay open 24 hours a day. He says that he never drinks and drives. (Rather, he drinks and his wife drives him home.)
Goodman is immensely popular. In 2003, he was elected to a second term with 86 percent of the vote, and aides say that he might break that mark in April, when voters are expected to return him to office for a third and final term.
Goodman said that he had turned down pleas from fellow Democrats in 2006 to run for the Senate. He added, however, that whoever is elected next year should not be a teetotaler. "I do think this country needs a president who drinks," he said. (President George W. Bush has said that he stopped drinking after his 40th birthday.)
"My dad must have cheated a little bit," he said, "because it had to have gotten into his genes, this thirst for liquor. And that was passed on to me."
Also passed on, Goodman said, was an ability to "discern a good drink from a bad drink," a topic that brings us back to the classroom. In truth, the mayor's curriculum was skimpy at best, with the proceedings mainly consisting of Goodman's bantering with Armando Rosario, a professional bartender, as to who made the better martini.
"I'm going to win," Goodman quipped, "because he's in my city, and every once in a while the company for which he works needs a permit."
His recipe, after all, calls for "one part gin, two parts gin, and two ice-cold olives." (Vermouth, he said, "is irrelevant.")
But during the class, Goodman went a step further in his minimalism, discarding the olives, choosing only to drop two garlic cloves plucked from them into the mix. The result was, well, just a cup of gin served over ice: unsophisticated, yes, but undeniably strong.
And that, Goodman said, is just the way the mayor likes it. "The martini," he said, "reflects the maker."
source : International Herald Tribune
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