A groundbreaking leader in the public and private sectors, former Las Vegas Mayor Jan Jones Blackhurst is our guest this week on Nevada Week In Person.

♪♪ Support for Nevada Week In Person is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt.

-Welcome to Nevada Week In Person.

I'm Amber Renee Dixon.

She ran to become Las Vegas' first female mayor on a dare and is credited with helping the city become more livable amid unprecedented growth.

As a senior executive at Caesars Entertainment, she oversaw the development of the first responsible gaming practices.

She served on numerous boards like the Las Vegas Stadium Authority and the Nevada Resort Association.

Jan Jones Blackhurst, currently the Executive Director of the UNLV Black Fire Leadership Initiative, thank you for joining Nevada Week In Person.

-Thanks for having me, Amber.

-I talked with you a little bit before this off camera, and you have six children?

(Jan Jones Blackhurst) I do have six children.

-And when did you have all of these children amid this tremendous career?

-They really, I started having my children at 31, the same time I inherited two of my fabulous stepchildren.

And then I had three more children.

-And you told me 31, because you had never planned on having children.

-I had never planned on having children.

-So why did you?

-Well, I got pregnant by accident.

And when my first, my oldest daughter, was born, I found that I didn't realize I could ever love anything that much.

So the rest was easy.

-I appreciate you sharing that with me.

I think some women might be hesitant to share that.

-It is, it's hard.

I talk to women about children and having children and the responsibility of it and the guilt that comes with it and how problematic it is and what you're going to carry on your shoulders.

And what I've learned through all of it, it's just about love.

You love your children.

You do the best you can.

They'll be just fine.

-So no matter what, no matter how involved you are or are not, you're going to have guilt, you think?

-Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely.

You're always questioning, Am I spending enough time?

Am I not spending, you know, quality time?

Am I not doing the work I should be doing because I'm spending too much time worrying about my children, you know, and do I need to miss this meeting to get to this game?

You know, you're just conflicted.

And I think, you know, I believe there is a definite maternal instinct, which doesn't mean that men aren't wonderful parents.

I don't think they carry the same guilt.

-Will you tell our viewers the story you told me about being in Utah.

-I was sitting in Utah.

This was towards the middle of my tenure at Caesars, and they sat me next to the perfect family--perfect mother, perfect father, three gorgeous children talking serious things like The Odyssey.

And I was, for the moment, just overcome with guilt, and I texted my kids and I said, I just want to tell you I'm so sorry.

I'm so sorry I wasn't there more.

I'm so sorry I missed important moments in your life.

And within 45 seconds, all of them texted me back, and they said, Who is this and what did you do with our mother?

So, you know... -Was that their way of saying, That doesn't matter to us?

-No.

And a way of saying, We're proud of you.

We're proud of the choices you made, and we're good grown-up, responsible adults.

-As a result.

-Yes.

So we're all okay.

-And when you say all of them, all six?

-The texts came from four.

But my two, my two oldest were in marriages and-- -Busy.

-Busy.

-I bring that up only to clarify that three are stepchildren?

-Yes.

-That's a different aspect of mothering, too.

-You know, I'll tell you something.

My oldest stepdaughter, who's just fabulous, she brought me my birthday present, and it was this giant pillow that had the words to "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."

And she goes, I saw it, and it reminded me of how you always sang me to sleep when I was a little girl, and I just had to have it for you.

So they remember little things.

She's 51 now, and she remembered what songs we were singing good night.

-When you talked about the guilt that comes with motherhood, what would you tell mothers who are conflicted?

-Make the decision that's right for you.

Love your kids, explain to them; but if you're okay, they're going to be okay.

-How do you know what's right for you?

-I think you do.

I mean, I always knew from the time I was a little girl, which is why I thought I'd never have kids, that I wanted to be in business.

I wanted to be in business.

I wanted to run things.

Who knows why?

My mother didn't have any idea what to do with me.

I think it's why she left a lot of my upbringing to my father, because, remember, it's 50s and girls didn't want to do that.

I did.

-I read a quote from your mother.

And I forget what article, but it was when you were stepping down as mayor, and she talked about your care for other people and for animals, and this became evident to her when you resuscitated a pigeon?

-I did mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

-What?

-I had homing pigeons, and they lived in a giant pigeon coop in the backyard.

And I went out one morning and found one of my pigeons in the water.

And I thought, well, you know, they taught me how to resuscitate a child, maybe it'll work on a bird.

Well, it didn't, and I wouldn't advise it to anyone.

But there is a great story.

My father had had enough of pigeons, so he took all my pigeons, put them in the car and took them down to a park in Beverly Hills and let them go.

They beat him home.

They're homing pigeons.

-They're smart.

-They're smart.

-Your father was in business in grocery stores, right?

-Yes.

-And that's what brought you to Las Vegas?

-Yes.

We had four supermarkets here, and three, they still exist, Smart & Final.

And the supermarkets in those days didn't make any money selling groceries, but they had 48 slot machines.

And my father said, we're not in the gaming business; we're in the grocery business.

I need you to go to Las Vegas and figure out how to sell groceries.

-How'd you do?

Did you do that?

-I did.

-Did you get rid of the slot machines?

-No.

I tried to when I was mayor, and I think they were going to run me out of town on the rail.

-What do you think when you look back at that decision to try and get rid of them and the pushback?

-I still think it was the right thing to do.

-Really?

-If I thought that Las Vegans were getting cheaper prices on their groceries because the money that was going into the slot machines, which is a topline revenue, was going to reduce their cost of product, maybe I'd say it was a good idea.

But I think we have-- I'm not going to be popular for this either.

But I think we have so much gambling here, I don't think it needs to be in all of our neighborhoods.

-And you were running on a platform of trying to make Las Vegas more livable for families.

-Yes.

-How else did you do that?

-When I was first elected mayor, we didn't have the open spaces.

Most of the neighborhoods didn't even have sidewalks.

So I changed the planning and the zoning and what was required; that these big developers couldn't just come in and build what they wanted.

They had to build in a way to enhance the environment and where we lived and have parks and walking spaces and no more, no lot lines in little tiny 6,000 square foot.

You know, if you want people to live here, you want them to be proud of their neighborhoods.

And I think that that's some of the reason we haven't diversified as quickly as I think we should have.

People don't know what a wonderful place to live Las Vegas is.

They think we all live on the Las Vegas Strip.

-Yeah, they still don't know.

Who was it that dared you to run for mayor, and why?

-I dared me.

-Oh, you dared yourself?

-Well, the reason was a group of women that I had worked with to pass Proposition 7, which is the pro-choice amendment that's in the Nevada State legislative law.

-Voters voted on in-- -1990.

And they said we couldn't pass that either, and I was the chair and we raised the money and we passed it.

There was an open mayor seat, and the same group of women came and said, You should run for this job.

So I went to the three people that made all the political decisions in Nevada, who are still, by the way, the same three people that make all the political decisions in Nevada.

-Who are they?

-I'm not giving you away.

And they all said, Don't be ridiculous.

You can never win.

John Ralston, who was one of my heroes at the time, wrote an article and called me a huckster, and it just-- -I had to look that word up.

-Yeah.

-But this is partly because you were a salesperson.

-I was a salesperson.

I was on TV.

-Promoting car dealerships.

-Car dealerships, and I started promoting the Thriftimarts.

-Okay.

-And I thought, you know, that is so outrageous to tell me I can't possibly win.

This is just marketing.

So I ran on a dare that I thought with the right message and the right marketing that I could be elected.

And two weeks before the election, one of the major pollsters in the United States said I was 22 points behind and I couldn't possibly win, and I won in the primary.

So first of all, don't believe what people tell you, you can and cannot do.

Secondly, don't let your fear keep you from making a choice, even if it seems a risky choice.

And I believe that there were a lot of women who maybe didn't answer polls or maybe didn't want to who voted for me, because I won with 51% of the vote.

And in Las Vegas, if you win in the primary, that's it.

You're elected.

-There's so much that I wish we could ask you about.

I mean, your work in DEI, the responsible gaming, but back to your time as mayor, the efforts and the progress you made to address homelessness, what did you do?

What was homelessness like in Las Vegas in the 90s?

-All right.

My first City Council meeting, the homeless marched on City Hall, and everybody said, Oh, you can't go out there.

These are dangerous people.

And I said, I'm going out there.

And some of this, I think, is women EQ skills.

-EQ?

-EQ, a sensitivity, a sense of I want to understand where a person's coming from.

So I went out and there were 150 people who were hot and tired and hungry and didn't know where to go and didn't have any services.

And these weren't bad people.

These were people who had lost hope, and they just wanted somebody to hear them.

So for the next eight years, I believe we built what was state-of-the-art homeless programs in the city of Las Vegas.

We had long-term care.

We had short-term care.

We had crisis intervention, which was a building 3,700 square feet on Main Street where you walked in, there was intake, and there was city, county, federal mental health, veteran services.

So you just had to go to a cubicle to see how to access help that you needed.

The last project I built in the city was a 150-unit SRO.

That's a single resident occupancy facility.

350 square feet so when people finally got themselves and had a job, you could afford a small place to live before you transitioned.

We did all of this in the 90s.

-And now it's being done again with the Campus for Hope.

By the time this interview airs, the ground will have been broken on that large homeless campus that sounds very similar to what you had.

Why was yours-- why is yours no longer in existence?

-Because the mayors after me didn't believe that homelessness was a priority.

And they not only defunded all the programs, they tore the buildings down.

And so now, 20 years later, we're starting all over again.

Only now, it's $200 million and counting.

And I hope it-- I hope it's immensely successful, but it's not in the center of downtown where a large portion of your homeless population still resides.

-And that's one of a few concerns that surround this.

Jan Jones Blackhurst, we have run out of time.

But please come back on so we can do Part 2.

-I would love to.

-Thank you for joining Nevada Week In Person.

-Real pleasure.