CEO of Nevada’s Largest Employer Slams Angle’s “Lack of Basic Business Understanding”
In a scathing critique of Sharron Angle’s qualification to represent Nevada in the US Senate, MGM Mirage CEO Jim Murren slammed the Republican nominee in an interview on CNBC this morning for having such “a lack of basic business understanding that that’s frightening to me.” Murren said Sen. Reid’s unique understanding and ability to deliver on behalf of Nevada’s top industry made him irreplaceable, noting that he’s “going to be a very worried executive” if Sharron Angle somehow manages to win.
Murren specifically praised Sen. Reid’s actions to save CityCenter – the largest construction project in North America – when it was on the verge of bankruptcy. Murren noted that Reid’s role as Majority Leader gives him a unique ability to get things done that no one else in the Nevada Congressional delegation can.
Murren: “When I asked all our delegates, and I did, and Senator Ensign, and our Congress people had called, you know, but there’s only one Senate Majority Leader, and so when people say that’s not important, it’s damn important. So, when the Senate Majority Leader calls the CEO of these banks, they call back. And then they called me, and I said, “Look, you can’t do this. You know, we got 10,000 construction workers working over there. If I don’t get this money we’re shutting that down, and I’m going to tell 10,000 people they’re not coming back to work on Monday.”
Thanks to Sen. Reid’s efforts, CityCenter is now up and running, employing at least 10,000 people today and employed an additional 12,000 Nevadans during its construction. Angle, on the other hand, has said repeatedly she would not have picked up the phone to calls the banks and save the project, as Sen. Reid’s did – an extreme and dangerous stance given the number of jobs at stake and the tough economic times we face.
Watch the interview here:
Full Transcript
Murren: When we almost lost City Center, and this is, you know, we’ve talked about this, but it, this is, it happened in this office, so, you know I can give it to you real time. It was right there on that phone, and I had, I was begging the banks to let us borrow $200 million dollars so we could take it out ofMGM and move it a few hundred yards down the road to put it into City Center, a enterprise that the banks didn’t have any claim over, and, you know, I was trying to get these banks to call us back to talk to us to let us do this, not knowing, by the way, whether that would succeed. It could have been just throwing money out the window. And when I asked all our delegates, and I did, and Senator Ensign, and our Congress people had called, you know, but there’s only one Senate Majority Leader, and so when people say that’s not important, it’s damn important. So, when the Senate Majority Leader calls theCEO of these banks, they call back. And then they called me, and I said, “Look, you can’t do this. You know, we got 10,000 construction workers working over there. If I don’t get this money we’re shutting that down, and I’m going to tell 10,000 people they’re not coming back to work on Monday. And that was in, that was last year, wasn’t but a year, a little over a year ago. And so, for me, that is what an elected official can do. I didn’t ask Senator Reid to do anything that, you know, he wouldn’t do, or anyone shouldn’t want to do. All I asked was, “Will you let these guys know that this is important?” I’m going to pay back every bit of money, in fact we have. We’ve gone from a project that almost went bankrupt to now there are 10,000 people working, CityCenter is profitable now. This whole economy is starting to slowly lift up. ’11 is gonna be better than 2010, but all that would have been lost if we didn’t save City Center, and the person running against Senator Reid doesn’t think that that happened, doesn’t think that’s important, said that, “Well, we only moved jobs from one resort to another. We didn’t create any jobs.” It’s just ridiculous. It just shows such a lack of basic business understanding that that’s frightening to me. So, in answer to your question, what am I going to do if Senator Reid loses, I’m going to be a very worried executive. I’m going to worry about how we’re going to be represented in Washington, how people are going to understand our industry now that a new Senator had been elected who has no idea what we do, has never, you know, bothered to find out what the gaming industry does, even though it’s 40% of the entire state budget. That’s just astonishing to me, and frightening, and it’s very scary. So, you know, we’ve been on record. We want Senator Reid to win. I personally want Republicans to take a lot of Senate seats, just not this seat.
