In Brief:
- Former U.S. Congresswoman Shelley Berkley became mayor of Las Vegas in December.
- Berkley has publicly invited Canadian and Mexican tourists to visit the city amid a tourism slump this summer.
- Las Vegas has been experiencing rapid growth for decades.
Last year, during a televised debate in the Las Vegas mayoral race, Shelley Berkley, a former seven-term Democratic congresswoman from Nevada running to replace outgoing mayor Carolyn Goodman, said this: “Whoever inherits the mayor’s position is almost destined for success.”
Now, nine months into her term as mayor, Las Vegas is facing a significant slump in tourism, by far its most important industry. Total visitation in the city was down 6.7 percent this past August versus the year before, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. The federal government’s hard-line immigration policies may be partly responsible: Flights from Canada and Mexico, the countries with the biggest shares of Las Vegas’ international tourism, are down 19 percent and 12 percent respectively, according to the LVCVA.
And, unrelated to the tourism slump, Las Vegas is also paying down a settlement from a decades-old lawsuit that has strained the city’s finances and led to a temporary hiring freeze.
But Berkley hasn’t changed her tune very much. The mayor was born in New York but moved with her family to Las Vegas when she was a young teenager, and has watched the region’s growth and transformation over decades. For most of her 14 years in Congress, Berkeley says, she represented the fastest-growing congressional district in the country. In recent decades, the city’s image in popular culture has shifted somewhat, from seedy and cheap to extravagant and luxurious (while maintaining its identity as an over-the-top spectacle).
It’s begun attracting professional sports franchises, including the former Oakland Raiders NFL team and, starting in 2028, the soon-to-be-former Oakland Athletics in baseball. Clark County, Nev., is projected to hit 3 million people by 2050 — up from 2.4 million people today and about a tenth of that in the mid-1960s when Berkley moved there.
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Of course, projecting confidence is part of a mayor’s job, especially in a place like Las Vegas.
And it’s a job Berkley, age 74, says she’s wanted for her whole life. Before running for Congress, Berkley served a term in the Nevada Assembly and as an elected member of the state’s higher-ed Board of Regents during the 1990s. She also worked as a lawyer representing Las Vegas casinos, and, after her term in Congress, as an executive at Touro University. Her whole career was set in motion, she says, because of hospitality jobs like the one her father worked, as a waiter at the Sands Hotel.
“We had a strong tourist-based economy where my dad, with no education at all — never graduated high school — was able to make a good living to support his family,” Berkley says. “I know the gaming industry very, very well and I’m a great proponent of it. It's an extraordinary industry and I think part of my job is to promote tourism and gaming.”
Even after serving in Congress, Berkley says being mayor is the highest-profile job she’s ever had — and one where she can see the results of her efforts much more quickly. One example is the settlement in the dispute over a property called the Badlands that began almost 20 years ago.
The Badlands was a former golf course bought by a developer who planned to build housing. But despite it being zoned for residential use, nearby neighbors were adamantly opposed to the project and the city refused to issue permits. The developer sued and eventually won. The city was on the hook for a major liability payout, in the hundreds of millions of dollars, but the City Council was unable to come to settlement terms with the developer. Two weeks after Berkley was inaugurated last December, she presided over a City Council meeting at which the council voted unanimously to buy back the property from the developer and sell it to someone else.
“We finished the negotiations, we signed all the papers, and we’re moving on. That was something that happened in real time and you’re able to see the results of your efforts,” Berkley says.
Still, the payout is big enough that the city is operating on what Berkley calls a “modified hiring freeze.” If an “essential” position goes vacant, the city will fill it; if it can be postponed, it will be. The city is delaying a few public works projects as well. All this not because of a tourism slump, but because the city tried to stop a project that was legally allowed to move forward.
“I think people have recognized that there's a limit to governmental authority, and I hope this never happens again,” Berkley says.
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“Truthfully we’re jealous of the mayor,” says Tick Segerblom, chairman of the Clark County Commission. “We have to bite the bullet, raise the taxes, and get all the complaints. She gets the glory.”
Like Berkley, Segerblom is fairly sanguine about the recent tourism slump. The county relies on sales tax revenue that rises and falls with tourism numbers, but it’s accustomed to those fluctuations.
Segerblom says he’s known Berkley for decades, and she’s well-suited to the role of mayor for a town like Las Vegas. “She’s the emissary, the cheerleader, the person that people look to to talk about Las Vegas. She’s a great spokesperson. She’s been around a long time and understands the media, understands soundbites. … It’s fun to see her in the position she’s in now,” he says. “She didn’t walk into the perfect situation, but she seems to be handling it.”
One area where Berkley has tried to tread carefully is immigration policy. She has advocated for the city’s immigrant population, and publicly pleaded for Canadian and Mexican tourists to continue visiting the city. But she has rejected the federal designation of Las Vegas as a “sanctuary city.” A lifelong Democrat, she says she’s “mindful of not picking a fight unnecessarily,” especially considering the millions of dollars in federal money that help support social services in Las Vegas.
“I’m protecting the people that need those grants the most,” Berkley says. “This is a tourism-based economy and we want people to come to Las Vegas and have a great time. The last thing we need is the national guard patrolling Las Vegas Boulevard or downtown Las Vegas.”
As for the hospitality industry, it’s already making adjustments for the recent decline in tourism. Average hotel room rates are about $12 lower per night than they were a year ago, despite continuing inflation. It’s a town that knows how to handle a run of tough luck.
“We’re just rolling with the punches,” Berkley says. “It’s just been the most fun and most interesting job I’ve ever had.”
