Which Culture Is Nevada’s?
These events suggest a misread of the I culture that may also have been implicit in Elazar’s placement of Nevada in the I complex. The culture is not the activity of private individuals. That Nevada has many “free spirits” and “gamblers” does not mean that the government is also a “free spirit” for sale to the highest bidder. Rather, Hulse seems to offer more poignant words in support of the notion that Nevada has been a traditionalistic (T) state, quite like the states of the South that seemed the only major bastions of T culture in Elazar’s study.
James Hulse writes, “Nevada as a political and social entity has from the beginning been especially vulnerable to [an] ambitious and wealthy oligarchy… largely because of its inherently weak and impoverished economic situation”. He goes on to suggest that the pattern has survived to this day, with the state being “exceptionally receptive to those with large amounts of money” (6) He then singles out persons of the gambling industry: William Harrah, Howard Hughes, Kirk Kerkorian, and Steve Wynn. Hulse even indicates that the state was exceedingly warm to mobsters who were essential in the expansion of the casino industry. Then he adds that “gambling control agencies were designed not only to regulate [gambling] but also to protect it from those elements that might… endanger its prosperity. Likewise, Nevada’s Senators and Representatives in Washington and the elected state officials have assumed the position of feudal knights protecting their domain from challengers” (7). The leaders were not merely brokers giving government favors to the winners in some marketplace of policymaking.
A new population influx has made Nevada what California was just a few decades ago – the fastest-growing state in the Union. Great population influxes changed California’s collective political orientations, as illustrated by Peter Schrag’s Paradise Lost (1998). The state moved away from an M culture as a lower-income population both grew and demanded more services at the expense of older Californians. So too did population changes make the Old South different in the latter decades of the past century. The population growth of Nevada, however, has not made noticeable changes in the orientation of politics in the Silver State. Of course such growth could have an influence if it continues. Many of the newcomers, however, are drawn to the state because of its low-cost and high-employment environment. In both cases, these attractive attributes are tied to the state’s reliance upon domination by a single industry. Quite frankly, although the state’s business climate regularly ranks at the top or in the top two or three places in Inc. Magazine rankings, the state does not attract nongambling enterprises in numbers sufficient to absorb employment demands of new residents. Newcomers also appreciate the very low state taxes, which are among the lowest in the nation. This is especially the case with senior citizens attracted to the several new Sun Cities of the Las Vegas area.
Nevertheless, there is a crisis of public services much like that witnessed in California. The school population is growing, and the Clark County school district does not have the tax resources to hire sufficient teachers or to build new school buildings fast enough. The state is also facing crises in transportation and the environment.
The casino industry is quite willing to let the politicians have a “free vote” on school issues or almost any other issue that does not directly affect their interests. They closely keep their eyes on tax policies, however. Here they are like residents – they appreciate low taxes. There have been calls for incremental tax increases from some and for monumental increases in gambling taxes by others. In the latter case, one state senator has called for a doubling of the gambling tax rate. In the 1998 gubernatorial primary, he also advocated higher gambling taxes. This was a unique stand, as all legislators in the state have taken campaign funds from the gambling industry. But the word unique is not a word to crave when seeking votes. The good senator won 15 per cent of the vote. That 15 percent probably represents a reasonable number for a subculture of Nevada that wants the casinos to pay much higher taxes.
In 1994, a feature story in Time magazine called Las Vegas “America’s City” and indicated that the city was not becoming like the rest of the nation but that rather the rest of the nation was becoming like Las Vegas (Andersen 1994). Perhaps the rest of the nation finds the “free spirit” life of Las Vegas inviting. The other states have embraced the gambling industry, and by doing so, they have allowed Nevada to have allies in its fights against federal interference with casinos. No other state has fallen into a posture of allowing gambling interests to completely dominate its politics, however. In the other states, such as California, the gambling interests have to fight out their battles against other interests that are already organized. The welcoming of gambling is an indicator that these states in many cases may have abandoned Elazar’s M culture. It is not an indicator that I cultures have fallen.
Nevada has played its politics game within the tenets of the T culture. In the past, Nevada felt it had to fight competition from other states that might have desired to have casinos. But now gambling has spread to all corners of the nation, and the game on gambling issues need not be played in a way that precludes compromises with competing states. The fear that a national political establishment will now ban all gambling, once a major fear for Nevadans, no longer grips the state. Unlike the Old South, which embraced a T culture when it was opposed by all the other regions of the nation, Nevada has seen much of the nation become as it is – gambling territory. Nevada now has allies in every region, something the South never had on race issues.
Contemporary Cultures and Interstate Cooperation on Gambling Issues
California voices are occasionally heard calling for wide-open casino gambling in order to check the outflow of money that its citizens take to Nevada casinos. Internal fights among various components of California’s gambling interests – tracks, card clubs, Native Americans, the lottery – will probably preclude this real threat to Nevada gambling from occurring within the foreseeable future. The compromise of Proposition 1A has also made California Native American gaming acceptable to Nevada—not only acceptable but also an opportunity for Nevada industry investment. Moreover, Nevada’s failure to attract manufacturers that can provide a large portion of supplies to the casinos means that the Silver State’s main industry will continue to support California’s industries with purchasing activities that will largely offset the Golden State’s citizens’ losses in the green-felt jungles of Glitter Gulch.