CARSON CITY, Nev.—Several months ago, Dennis Hof, owner of seven of Nevada's 18 legal brothels including most famously the Moonlite Bunny Ranch, announced that he was forming an exploratory committee to consider entering Nevada politics—and now, he's thrown his hat into the Nevada State Senate race, announcing that he will vie for the seat being vacated by outgoing Sen. Greg Brower, a Republican.
Hof will be running on the Libertarian Party ticket, and his only apparent challenger will be former Assemblywoman Heidi Gansert, also a Republican—and Hof figures he has an edge because if there's one thing he's completely open about, it's his relationship with women, both personally and professionally.
"You’re not going to find me in a sex scandal, like a lot of other politicians," Hof told The Daily Beast. "I’m not going to get caught cheating on my wife. I’ve got many girls … so that’s not going to happen.
“You’re not going to get me caught up in a scandal in a men’s bathroom with a guy, because everybody knows I’m heterosexual," he added, "but I have no problems with gays. You’re not going to catch me smoking weed. I don’t drink. I have a lot of sex and I eat a lot. … My life’s an open book. I don’t have anything to hide."
Hof, of course, is a very well-known public figure. Leaving aside his multi-season cable TV show, Cathouse, on HBO, Hof has also recently published a memoir, The Art of the Pimp, and was seen on national TV after basketball star Lamar Odom was found unconscious at one of his bordellos and rushed to a hospital.
But Hof has been an excellent promoter for himself, for his brothels and for legalized prostitution. For example, last April, he mounted a "Hookers For Hillary" campaign, with many of his working girls supporting the Clinton presidential candidacy. He also submitted the name of one of his longtime workers, Air Force Amy, to replace Alexander Hamilton on the U.S. $10 bill.
Hof also announced that he would gladly host the weddings of gay and transgender couples at the Bunny Ranch, and offered Caitlyn Jenner a job as a madam at his Kit Kat Ranch.
As the Daily Beast article also notes, Hof arranged a "cavalcade of publicity stunts that included posting bail for Liberace’s ex-lover, offering disgraced former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich an 'apprenticeship,' and ... host[ing] a 'Get My Grandpa Laid' contest on the Howard Stern Show in 2013, but the elderly winner died before he could reach the Bunny Ranch for a romp with two call girls."
Considering that Nevada is home to the only counties in the U.S. where prostitution is legal, Hof figures that being a pimp doesn't carry nearly the cachet in his state that it would in, say, Mississippi.
"People around the country might look at this and say it's crazy … a brothel owner now wants to be a politician," Hof told The Daily Beast. "People in Nevada don't think that way."
As for Hof's political platform, he'll apparently be running on such issues as overturning the $1.5 billion tax plan passed by the legislature in June, as well as upgrading Nevada's public schools so they're no longer ranked worst in the nation, as they have for the past three years. Of course, he will also be fighting for legalized prostitution and putting an end to sex trafficking.
