Culture

Brothel Owner Dennis Hof Wins Nevada Election, Only One Problem – He’s Dead

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EDISON, NJ - NOVEMBER 13: Dennis Hof owner of the "Moonlite Bunny Ranch" and Taylor Lee attend Exxotica Day 1 at New Jersey Convention and Exposition Center on November 13, 2015 in Edison, New Jersey. (Photo by Bobby Bank/Getty Images)

Getty Image / Bobby Bank / Contributor


Usually in politics, it’s the dead people who are casting votes and not dead candidates who are receiving them. But not in Nevada. Dennis Hof, the iconic brothel owner, died last month. But that itsy-bitsy impediment didn’t stop his supporters from electing him on Tuesday. Maybe democracy was a mistake?

Hof, who owns several legal brothels in Nevada, was running as the Republican candidate in Nevada’s 36th Assembly District in the southern part of the state. The electorate in the 36th Assembly District was notified before the extremely grave election that Hof died, but voters were still dying to give the cold shoulder to the one candidate who was actually alive.

On Tuesday, Hof buried his Democratic opponent Lesia Romanov in a stiff competition. After losing an election to a dead guy, Lesia Romanov may want to think about a different line of work. Exactly three weeks after his death, the brothel owner won in a landslide, snatching 68.3 percent of the vote. People missed a golden opportunity to make it 69 percent.

So does his corpse get propped up on a desk and quietly serve his term and actually be more beneficial to the citizens than most politicians? Not exactly. Members of the Nevada Republican Party will choose a replacement, preferably one with a pulse, to fill Hof’s State Assembly seat. So the voters will still get a Republican in the 36th Assembly District.

Hof called himself the “Trump from Pahrump,” as a reference to the small town in Nevada where he lived. Hof also ran for office in 2016 as a Libertarian but lost.

Hof was best known for owning the Moonlite Bunny Ranch, which was featured on the HBO reality series Cathouse that ran from 2005 until 2014. Back in October 2015, Lamar Odom was found unconscious at one of his brothels and had cocaine and opiates in his system.

Hof, who wrote The Art of the Pimp, had spent the four previous days before his death partying at his brothel for his 72nd birthday. His body was discovered by porn actor Ron Jeremy and a prostitute at the Love Ranch brothel, about an hour outside Las Vegas. Hof’s cause of death has yet to be determined, but authorities don’t believe foul play to be involved.

One could argue that Dennis Hof could be the first politician to not utter even one lie while in office.

[CBSNews]