A War Between States

(But) there is clearly a certain amount of grim glee at getting under the skin of their Golden State counterparts. Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman said he can't wait for the new ads and a chance to needle California leaders about picking off companies and jobs.

"It's going to drive them bonkers," Goodman said. "We're going to crush them."

He and others say they want to erect one billboard outside California's state Capitol building in Sacramento.

The Nevada Development Authority, a nonprofit that recruits businesses, is funding the radio, TV and print ads.

At least one television station, KABC-TV in Los Angeles, has declined to air Nevada's latest commercials, which were scheduled to begin running Friday for 90 days in Southern California markets.

"We live, work and play in L.A. and we're not going to run commercials that will be detrimental to our state," said KABC-TV President and General Manager Arnold Kleiner.

Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce President Gary Toebben said he thinks businesses will pay attention to the campaign, but aren't likely to immediately pack up and bolt eastward.

"Right now, most businesses are more concerned about survival than they are about relocation," Toebben said.

Hollingsworth said previous campaigns have resulted in a 10 percent to 20 percent uptick in businesses relocating from California to southern Nevada. In the past five years, 59 businesses worked through the development authority to make that move, creating 1,436 jobs in Nevada.

Toebben said he's taking the competition seriously and is treating the budget crisis and potential California job losses as an emergency.

"This is like having an earthquake," he said. "When you have an earthquake, you take action."

The Golden State won't let its businesses go easily, especially not to Nevada, if one California lawmaker has his say.

A week after the Nevada Development Authority ran a series of advertisements urging California companies to jump ship, Assemblyman Jose Solorio (D-Santa Ana) is retaliating.

"I was pretty outraged by the nastiness of their tone," he said. "It's one thing to compare states in a factual way, but when you're doing nasty ads veiled in humor which dehumanize Californians, that's over the top."

On Friday, Solorio launched his own offensive: a multimedia blitz of pro-California ads proclaiming that "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but what happens in California makes the world go 'round."

Nevada started it. The Nevada Development Authority launched a campaign that will spend a million dollars over a year to air a series of ads enticing California businesses to move to Las Vegas. The spots boast about Nevada's low taxes and workers' comp fees and feature a chimpanzee and a really bad actress portraying a television newswoman who turns into a pig wearing bright red lipstick.

California's political and financial dysfunction cannot be denied, but, as it turns out, it also doesn't work so well to base your state economy on the hopeless hopes of starry-eyed gamblers. This year, Nevada, like pathetic old California, has been battling a multibillion-dollar budget gap. In April, an official of the Nevada Mining Assn. -- a business group, mind you -- told the Associated Press that the shortfall was "a wake-up call to say that we're broke" and a signal that "we're going to have to raise taxes."

All is not well in California, and no one's in favor of needless taxation or regulation. But don't let hard times convince you that there are swarms of corporations rolling back and forth across state lines like armies on the march in search of a warm pair of arms to fall into. When it comes to showing a little skin to woo businesses, the danger of pandering far outweighs that of complacency.