The black-and-white photo hangs in a place of honor inside Las Vegas Mayor Shelley Berkley’s office and speaks to a different era of Democratic Party politics in Nevada.

For one thing, it shows four Democrats actually laughing. When’s the last time you saw that happen?

The picture was taken in the late 1980s, which I don’t remember as a bust-a-gut decade for Democrats. But the moment of levity is captured right there on the wall at City Hall.

The camera catches Berkley in the fast company of the state party’s legendary three amigos: Sens. Harry Reid, Richard Bryan and Rep. Jim Bilbray. The prankster Bryan sticks out his tongue, the squinting Bilbray snickers. The senior Reid, no Henny Youngman on the stump, is practically grinning.

And there’s the smiling Berkley, the former Strip cocktail waitress and UNLV student body president who served a term in the Assembly before winning a seat on the Board of Regents. She served throughout the tumultuous 1990s with the same academic chip on her shoulder that her friend former Regent Bilbray had when he fought for a fair share of funding for Southern Nevada’s fast-growing UNLV. 

These days, most people probably know Berkley best as a former six-term member of Congress, who narrowly lost in 2012 to incumbent Sen. Dean Heller (R). After suffering what she calls a political heartbreaker, she admits in a recent interview, “I had no idea what I was going to do with the rest of my life, and it actually turned out to be the best thing that could have possibly happened to me.”

Berkley spent most of the next decade as CEO and senior provost of Touro University’s Western Division, a private medical school system that includes a campus in Henderson. She enjoyed the work and could have retired there with no regrets — not about her years in the House, that stinging Senate loss or any of it.

But remaining on the sidelines was never Berkley’s style, and entering her early 70s didn’t change that. Her decision to reenter politics with a run for mayor came as little surprise to those who know her.

With Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman term-limited after a whopping 13 years in office, Berkley defeated Councilwoman Victoria Seaman in 2024. The mayor’s job is officially nonpartisan, but Berkley has always worn her politics on her sleeve.

“As much as I loved Touro, I like being in office and doing work for the public,” she says. “I never wanted to go D.C. again, and I never wanted to go to Carson City again. And now I’m mayor of Las Vegas, and I get to sleep in my own bed at night.

“And I think, oh, thank heavens. Because if I was back there in D.C. now, I would be ready to pull my hair out of my head.”

She is not alone in that frustration, of course. The question, one that defines the office she holds, is what can a mere mayor do about it?

In a strong-manager form of government, the mayor’s official duties are akin to being a member of the Las Vegas City Council with senior ribbon-cutting privileges. In practice, as the Goodman city hall dynasty illustrated, the job comes with a high-octane bully pulpit thanks to the international profile of Las Vegas. Geographical nitpicking aside, no one cares that the city limits don’t include what the world knows as the Las Vegas Strip.

At a time when many Las Vegas leaders were silent and staring at their shoes, Berkley was outspoken about the damaging effect of President Donald Trump’s economic chaos and dizzying tariff threats against our longtime trading allies. Trump’s alienation of throngs of loyal Canadian tourists and other international travelers to Las Vegas made everyone’s job harder. While gaming industry titans were experiencing selective deafness, the mayor pointed out the obvious.

Berkley remains concerned about the administration’s aggressive immigration policies and use of masked federal agents and U.S. military personnel in roundups. It doesn’t take a marketing maven to surmise that glorified goon squads and National Guard troops are a bad look in an ethnically blended tourist city.

“Right now, our biggest challenge is the feds, and I’m doing everything I can to keep them out of Southern Nevada,” Berkley says. “The last thing I need with a soft economy is the National Guard walking down Fremont Street. I think this current administration is perfectly capable of finding a reason to come in here and be very disruptive, which would have very devastating consequences for this city. That is paramount on my mind, to be perfectly candid.”

Does it sound like she’s taking this personally? It should.

Berkley comes from a family that made its living on the floor of the gaming industry. Her late father, George Levine, was a storied showroom captain and maître d’, and she remains proud of her early days schlepping cocktails to slot players and high rollers alike. When she promotes local businesses in the downtown corridor, including talking up traditional Vegas come-ons such as cheap shrimp cocktails on Fremont Street, she sounds authentic.

Berkley’s visions for improving the city are complicated by Trump’s chaotic economy and the stinging $286 million settlement of the Badlands Golf Course litigations that coincided with the start of her term. The city was forced to trim staff, tap general fund and liability fund reserves, delay capital improvements and jettison Cashman Field to resolve its legal fight with developer Yohan Lowie.

With her legislative experience and Washington contacts, Berkley appears well-positioned not only to raise the mayor’s profile, but also its impact on the complex issues facing Las Vegas and other metro areas.

She’s experienced the recurring themes that have haunted Nevada’s quality of life for generations. In our brief interview, she reels off a litany of trouble spots and perennial challenges. From encouraging transportation options to improving health care and public education, she reminds a skeptic, “You get what you pay for.”

“Ever since I served in the Assembly in 1983, we’ve been talking about economic diversification,” Berkley says. “You need a strong education system to accomplish that. I’m having the same conversation that we had 40 years ago, and we still haven’t done what we need to do to truly diversify our economy.”

Reminded of the limits of the office and gavel, she responds, “The big issues aren’t within my responsibility, but I have a bully pulpit and I talk about these issues a lot.”

She calls her relationship with Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill professional and productive, and expresses relief to have reached an accord with the community’s animal rights activists over pet store sales, a surprisingly political issue in Southern Nevada.

Then there’s the issue that can’t be hidden: the increasing impact of homelessness on the community.

“The biggest challenge I have is homelessness,” Berkley says. “Human beings should not be on the street. It’s a humanitarian crisis. It’s dirty, it’s unhealthy, it’s dangerous and I don’t want to create an environment that we’re sustaining people on the street. I want to create an environment where we are dealing with the root causes of homelessness — mental health, addiction, a lack of job training — and do whatever we can do to help people that are living on the street become self-sustaining and able to care for themselves and their families. It’s a very, very huge challenge.”

And Shelley Berkley’s only a mayor.

In the final act of her long political career, it’s her turn to try to do something about it.

John L. Smith is an author and longtime columnist. He was born in Henderson and his family’s Nevada roots go back to 1881. His stories have appeared in New Lines, Time, Reader’s Digest, Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast, Reuters and Desert Companion, among others.