Separating "Jon stuff" from "book stuff"

When my incomparable wife, Sara, and I were in the special collections at UNR, delving into the vast Reid archive, she would often stop me as I excitedly showed her a new document I had found: “Honey, there are two kinds of things that we will find in here: Book Stuff and Jon Stuff.” And then she would assure me that what I had found was the latter and not the former.

As you will see when the book is published in January — preorder now, please! — there were plenty of documents that were Book Stuff. Reid was a pack rat and did very little vetting for what was put in his archive, much to my delight. There are thousands of notes, staff memos and emails Sara and I found. I am going to regularly post some of the Jon Stuff here until the book is published — and maybe afterwards, too!

Here are today’s entries:

First, one of the sub rosa relationships Reid had — and I touch on this in the book — was with the late Sheldon Adelson, the GOP megadonor. Reid and Adelson clearly liked and respected each other, and Reid once drew a distinction between Adelson and the Koch brothers, which infuriated ex-RNC Chair Michael Steele, who is now on MSNBC. Reid aide David Krone and Adelson lieutenant Andy Abboud also developed a relationship, and in snippets of an exchange below, you can see that Adelson, who was opposed to Internet gambling, tried to influence Reid, who was involved on behalf of other Strip companies in trying to help them pave the way for web gaming. This was a classic example of Reid playing the “no permanent friends, no permanent enemies game,” and Adelson never went after Reid in his campaigns.

Second document: One of Reid’s characteristics that I write about in the book was his LDS faith and how important it was to him — both spiritually and politically. He was more devout than people thought, and he also knew the power of the Mormon vote in Nevada. He would often be called on by church higher-ups for help, and he was close to prominent Mormons in Utah and Washington, DC. This is an example of his advocacy as he wrote a letter to then-President Bill Clinton in 1998 on behalf of some endangered Mormon missionaries. He also said he had written to then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

Hope you enjoyed these nuggets of “Jon Stuff,” as Sara would call them. Let me know what you think, and don’t forget to pre-order the book!