No showgirls – or guys – for the new Mayor Goodman. "That’s not me. I’m a mom and a grandma," she says, describing herself as an "under-the-radar type person." Carolyn Goodman also characterizes herself as a "consensus builder and a salesperson," setting herself apart from her fractious husband, who loved a good confrontation. Or, as former employee Isabelle Holman told reporter Ken Miller, "She doesn’t spend her money on designer clothes, she’s driven the same car for 20 years and she never wants to take credit for anything."
But she’s a go-getter. The daughter of one physician and the mother of another (as well as having two sons who followed in their father’s footsteps and became doctors), Carolyn Goodman has been on the Las Vegas scene since 1964. In addition to raising four children – all adopted -- she also made the time to take a master’s degree from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas in 1973, at age 34.
The Goodmans met when he was an undergrad at Haverford College and she was attending Bryn Mawr College. He was from Philadelphia and she hailed from Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Surprisingly, Oscar Goodman had aspirations to become a rabbi – but his future wife put the kibosh on that. She didn’t want to be a clergyman’s wife. In August 1964, the young couple moved to Vegas, where Oscar Goodman presciently sensed he would make a mint. After a brief career as a prosecutor, he hung out his shingle as a defense attorney, took some of the town’s most notorious characters as clients and … well, you know the rest.
Despite being political novice, Mrs. Goodman handily led a crowded field of challengers in the mayoral primary. She proceeded on to steamroll Clark County Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani in the June election. That was practically anticlimactic after an odd grudge match in the primary. Rival educator Victor Chaltiel spent a million dollars trying to persuade voters to listen past his impenetrable French accent and vote him mayor. His run seemed like some bizarre internecine feud of educators – Chaltiel chairs the rival Adelson Educational Campus – but Chaltiel’s copious TV and Internet ads bought him nothing better than a fourth-place finish.
Mrs. Goodman’s signature achievement was the founding of the Meadows School (named for the nearby mall), in 1984, which ran pro bono for 26 years. It began with a $300,000 loan, 1.25 acres of land and an inaugural enrollment of 140 students. "We went from zero to about a $17 million [annual budget] business. We grew from four employees to just under 150 now," she told local journalist Jon Ralston, while the campus sprawls over 40 acres in Summerlin.
According to the Huffington Post, the Meadows School is "the city’s premier college preparatory academy and alma mater of the scions of many of the town’s rich and powerful." Mrs. Goodman’s official biography explains her tenure as one in which she "planned and oversaw the entire day-to-day operations, created and orchestrated the curriculum development; supervised the budget, was responsible for hiring administration, faculty and staff; and managed the entire physical campus development … for the organization."
She explained her educational philosophy to Las Vegas Weekly as follows: "Once anything is for profit, the goal becomes satisfying the stockholders. I wanted the focus to always be on the children. We really went out to find families of all races and religions, and we set aside a fifth of our operating budget for low-income families." She also was a moving force behind the renovation of downtown’s Fifth Street School, now home to the Nevada School for the Arts.
Her priorities for the city as mayor are to bring in IT and medical professionals. "You can’t have a great city if you don’t have great medical care," Mrs. Goodman argues. She’d also like to see the state open its wallet to movie companies, who rarely shoot here due to Nevada’s lack of tax incentives for film and TV (putting it in a very small minority of American states).
After seeing three prostitutes openly trying to flag down motorists on Joe W. Brown Drive, near the Las Vegas Hilton, Mrs. Goodman made cracking down on the oldest profession one of her mayoral concerns, calling for a greater Vice Squad presence downtown. She’d also like to lure more retirees to the city, emphasizing its low taxes and balmy weather.
Now that the area’s professional class thinks downtown Las Vegas is fashionable again, thanks to areas like the Arts District and Fremont East, Mrs. Goodman would like to see them living there again. But that requires certain kinds of infrastructure – such as a good supermarket, something the new mayor promises to pursue. That’s the best idea for downtown we’ve heard in ages.
In the meantime, she’ll have to put off her other top order of business: Housecleaning. "I want to … start throwing things out," she told Vegas Seven last year. "We’ve collected junk and I have not attended to that."
