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By ED VOGEL
rEVIEW-JOURNAL CAPITAL BUREAU
CARSON CITY - Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, people would stare when the big burly guy who resembled home run slugger Mark McGwire walked into the Legislative Building, took his place by the lobbyist table and displayed a broad grin.
Harvey Whittemore seldom ventured into legislative hearing rooms. He didn't need to stoop that low. Whittemore, now 55, was the supreme legislative lobbyist.
He represented the gaming, tobacco and liquor industries and was managing partner of the Reno office of Lionel Sawyer & Collins, the state's premier law firm. He could get legislators to pass the legislation his clients wanted and then help the same legislators finance their next political campaigns.
Sometimes called the 64th legislator, Whittemore, at the request of legislative leaders, even wrote much of the bill in 1991 that led to the imposition of the state's first business tax.
But like McGwire, whose grandeur faded once it became known he used steroids, Whittemore today is a pariah. A grand jury is looking into allegations that he violated federal campaign contribution law while channeling money to some high-profile officials, including Harry Reid, the U.S. Senate majority leader from Nevada.
Whittemore has not been found guilty of anything, and the campaign finance violations he may have committed could lead only to civil fines assessed by the Federal Election Commission.
But people who were his friends no longer want to be mentioned in the same sentence with him. Almost all of a dozen former legislators and lobbyists called by the Las Vegas Review-Journal refused even to talk about him on the record.
That happens when the FBI raids your businesses as it has done with Whittemore, and business partners hurl multimillion-dollar lawsuits at each other.
WHITTEMORE THE MAN
Born on Aug. 17, 1956, in Carson City, Whittemore grew up in places like Sparks, Yerington, Las Vegas and Tempe, Ariz.
His father was a school counselor. He graduated from the University of Nevada, Reno, and then from Arizona State University Law School.
He met his wife, Annette, the daughter of a rural Nevada doctor, at UNR.
They have gained acclaim for their good works on behalf of their five children. They have heavily supported Western Nevada College in Carson...