The Midas Touch

1084
September 11th, 2019
Back The Midas Touch

In the 1980s, a group of major hotel owners in Miami Beach, FL. organized to bring casino gambling to the city through a statewide voters initiative. We almost won.

I once worked for one of the wealthiest men in America and it was definitely a fun job.

Stephen Muss was born in New York, the son of a builder who was one of 11 children. The Muss organization built tract homes on Long Island and developed 20 subdivisions that had over 20,000 homes.

Muss started out as a laborer and moved up in the family organization to become a sales and construction supervisor.

Tall, brilliant, with a sense of humor, he became a multi-millionaire and purchased the Fontainbleau Hotel in Miami Beach for $27 in 1978. He poured another $100 million into the aging but magnificent hotel over the years and eventually sold it for $165 million.

Now in his 91st year, Muss and his wife recently sold their waterfront mansion in Miami Beach for $16.5. He bought the 11,999 square foot home in 2005 for $14.5 million from rock star Lenny Kravitz.

The incredible home has six bedrooms, seven bathrooms, three half baths, a salt water swimming pool, a jacuzzi, private boat dock, movie theater, gymnasium, elevator and a balcony terrace that overlooks the ocean and Miami Beach.

In the 1980s, I saw an ad in the Miami Herald for a publicity writer. Muss headed a group of Miami Beach hotel owners who wanted to bring casino gambling to Miami Beach via a statewide initiative.

I was living in Lake Worth, FL. and drove to Miami Beach for the interview. The hotel owners looked over my resume and hired me.

Our office facilities were in the Dupont Hotel in Miami. We would have weekly meetings to discuss strategy. Muss would always head the meetings and they were fun events.

A fast talking New Yorker, he would enter the large conference room and open the meeting with a joke.

"Where's the horses?," he would say. "There's gotta be horses around the place with all this horse shit."

The hotel owners spent millions of dollars on the statewide campaign. We had a great team that included a professional vocalist who sang commercials to promote our campaign.

Muss had also hired some absolutely beautiful girls to staff the office. He paid all of us well. He expected to win the election.

We hired celebrities to make television commercials, met with groups of voters, wrote publicity releases and did everything we could to create a message favorable to casino gambling. There were no dull days during the campaign.

I really believed in our campaign and gave it all I had. We traveled around the state of Florida to talk to voters.

While many were in favor of casino gambling, Florida has a Bible belt that opposed us. Our other enemies included DisneyWorld which, ironically, owned a casino cruise ship.

DisneyWorld teamed up with the Bible belt and matched the millions of dollars that Muss and the other hotel owners poured into the election.

When the voters cast their ballots, we lost.

Muss shrugged off the defeat like a professional. He paid for a great party for the staff, shook the hands of all the employees, and wished us well.

As I made the 50 mile drive back to my home in Lake Worth, I thought how nice it must be to be rich and have the Midas touch.

“I once worked for one of the wealthiest men in America”

Back to articles
Play now and win big at Las Vegas USA!

Search

Search Results

Select language

English English

Don't show this again

Share on Facebook

Share on Twitter

Share