Dennis Hof had gained a reputation as a notorious brothel owner and reality TV star when he died in 2018, three weeks before an election for the Nevada State Assembly, which he won posthumously.
HBODennis Hof was inspired to get into politics by Donald Trump.
Dennis Hof viewed himself as an anti-establishment hero. He likened himself, in many ways, to Donald Trump, even going as far as to refer to himself as the “Trump of Pahrump.” Whether Trump would find the comparison favorable, though, is an entirely different matter.
Hof did certainly have some things in common with the president. He was never a part of the Washington D.C. establishment, he starred on a reality television show, he spent most of his adult life as a businessman, and somehow he managed to overtake every Republican candidate he squared up against in local elections. Unlike Trump, however, Hof didn’t dabble in real estate, online universities, vodka, or casinos — Hof was a brothel owner.
In many ways, Dennis Hof seemed antithetical to the core values espoused by conservative Republicans. The brothels he ran — including his “world famous BunnyRanch” — were legal thanks to a Nevada law that legalizes sex work in counties with a population under 700,000 people. It was a far cry from “traditional family values.” But despite that, Hof unseated a three-term Republican incumbent in a Nevada State Assembly primary race.
In an even more shocking twist, Dennis Hof died three weeks before the general election in November 2018. Then America’s most famous “pimp” won the race against his Democratic opponent posthumously.
How?
Dennis Hof’s Rise To Prominence In The Nevada Brothel Business
WENN Rights Ltd / Alamy Stock PhotoDennis Hof at a fundraising event in 2010.
Dennis Hof was never one to shy away from controversy or bite his tongue. This is how Hof introduced himself to the readers of his memoir, The Art of the Pimp (2015), which was named in an homage to Trump’s Art of the Deal:
“If you want to know about my first erection, and I’m sure you do, this is the story: I am eight years old. My grandmother takes me to the Arizona State Fair. We notice a big crowd at one end and she decides to investigate. Some people are filming a movie, but I can’t see much, so we climb into the bleachers. We reach the third row and I turn around and look down and see a gorgeous, red-lipped blonde in front of the camera, getting ready for her shot. She looks up at me and waves, and suddenly I can’t breathe.”
The aforementioned blonde was, according to Hof, none other than Marilyn Monroe. And seeing her, he wrote, made it so that he could not resist a “glammed-up blonde” for the rest of his life. Hof adds that he would sleep with a brunette as well, so long as she was “hot.”
But he hadn’t originally planned to get into sex work. In fact, Hof’s first business venture was owning a handful of gas stations. He was young then, 22, with a wife named Shirley, a young daughter, and a baby on the way. Hof, who described himself as “a good husband,” had also been cheating on his wife with their landlord each month when she collected rent.
Then, in 1972, a woman from a local massage parlor worked out a deal with him. Her girls were having trouble getting to work due to a gas shortage, so if Hof could set aside some fuel for them at his gas stations, she said that Hof could make use of their services whenever he wanted with no charge.
Hof did so frequently. Soon he realized he that he “couldn’t get enough of [sex]” and that he’d “had fallen madly in love with prostitutes.”
As his business ventures continued to grow, Hof began spending more and more time at the Moonlite Ranch brothel in Mound House, Nevada. Because the county’s population was so small — less than 700,000 — the law allowed sex work, and Hof put the service to use. When he learned in the early 1990s that the Moonlite was up for sale, he bought it for $1 million.
HBOHof became famous thanks to the HBO series Cathouse, among other appearances.
“I wanted the girls to be independent, to set their own prices and make their own deals,” he wrote. “Over the years, I had created some of the best sales teams in the country. If I could teach a high-school dropout how to sell a time-share, surely I could teach a hooker how to sell herself.”
But while Hof’s official rule for the newly renamed World Famous Moonlite BunnyRanch was that the workers operated as independent contractors able to refuse any act or customer, later allegations against Hof suggested he didn’t apply this rule to himself.
How Dennis Hof Became “America’s Pimp”
MediaPunch Inc/Alamy Stock PhotoDennis Hof and porn actor Ron Jeremy at HuffPost Live in 2015.
Dennis Hof, much like his idol Donald Trump, eventually became a regular on Howard Stern’s radio program, known for his controversial opinions and unabashed, flagrant lifestyle.
He would appear on other television shows as well, including The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Today Show, The View, and Fox News. He eventually attracted the attention of producers at HBO, who were working on a series called Cathouse. The show documented the lives of workers at Hof’s Moonlite BunnyRanch and premiered in 2005.
Cathouse turned Hof into a full-fledged celebrity. The show ran from 2005 to 2014 and solidified Dennis Hof’s status as “America’s Pimp,” a term he embraced, claiming he wanted to change the definition of what people viewed a pimp to be. Pimps were frequently portrayed as being violent and exploitative, but Dennis Hof, as he presented himself, was not.
That said, sections of Hof’s own memoir — sections written by women who had worked for him and by a psychiatrist named Dr. Sheenah Hankin which he inexplicably chose to include — shatter this image.
Krissy Summers, a sex worker, wrote that Hof would sleep with a woman “one minute after her legal birthday, then put her right to work, as if this is something real men brag about.” Another sex worker who worked for Hof, Cami Parker, described him as a “soulless pimp.” Parker was 22 when she met Hof, and he already felt that she was too old for him.
Hof wrote their testimonies off as “craziness” in the next section of the book, but Hankin’s diagnosis of the man doesn’t paint him in any better of a light.
“Dennis uses the women he ‘loves’ for his own desires, loyal companionship and sex,” the psychiatrist wrote. “Like any pimp, he exploits them. This is sadistic behavior, and it is both unrecognized and denied.”
And these were just the accounts Hof included in his book.
But being a “pimp” didn’t seem to be enough for him. In 2018, after Dennis Hof saw Donald Trump’s run at the American presidency pay off, he felt inspired. Hof likened Trump to Christopher Columbus, saying that the president was a “pioneer” for people like Hof to get into politics
Political Campaign And Allegations Of Sexual Assault
IMDbDennis Hof in a promotional shoot during his political campaign.
“Dennis Hof is the Trump of Pahrump,” Hof stated in a 2018 interview with NPR. “He’s rich, he’s famous, he’s got nerves of steel. He likes hot girls.”
But Hof was similar to Trump in another way as well. Just as the president faced accusations of sexual assault, Hof did too.
Jennifer O’Kane, one of Hof’s former sex workers, described her experience to the New Yorker in 2018. During one New Year’s Eve party, O’Kane was instructed to go to her room, where she found Hof waiting. She said he then ordered her to get undressed, and forced her to give him oral sex — and when she began to cry, he took it further.
“I found out what anal sex was,” O’Kane recounted to the New Yorker. “That’s what he did to me. There was blood. He then penetrated the front — not clean. When he was done, he told me to clean up. And I was just crying. I cried and cried. It hurt. And he left.”
It wasn’t the only time Hof had violated O’Kane in such a way. Nor was she the only victim. Another woman, whose name was not shared, was being treated at a local hospital in September 2018, when Hof’s campaign was underway, and said that he had raped her too. At the time, The Nevada Independent reported that Hof was under investigation by the Nevada Department of Public Safety for sexual assault.
Hof denied the allegations and claimed they were “politically motivated.”
“I’m rich. I’m famous. That attracts girls,” Hof said. “I work with 500 sexually charged women that love sex. The last thing I would ever do is have to force anybody or coerce anybody to mess around with me.”
Hof ran as a Republican candidate, a voter demographic typically composed of conservatives who are more interested in traditional family values than sex work. But, like many “Never Trump” Republicans who still voted for the president, Hof’s personal character was secondary to his platform, which Hof described as “small government, low taxes.”
WENN Rights Ltd/Alamy Stock PhotoDennis Hof with Cami Parker, the person who described him as a “soulless pimp.”
“I hate this commerce tax,” he said. “I’m infuriated.” On social issues, Hof said, “Well you don’t bother me too much on that because I don’t care who has sex with who.”
Access to water also proved to be a huge issue for voters, and Hof positioned himself as a people’s champion, appearing at a “water-rights conference” held earlier that year alongside Ryan Bundy, whose family was well known for their anti-government occupations. The event was held at the Patch of Heaven evangelical camp, which was at the time in a legal battle with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for rights to water that had been diverted away from their property to the habitat of endangered pupfish.
Hof, like Trump, was not a typical politician — and the people of Pahrump had grown tired of typical politicians.
“The people that don’t like the brothels dislike higher taxes, liars, and pay-for-play politicians more than they dislike the brothels,” Hof stated.
He was right. The people were disillusioned with typical politicians. And in June 2018, Hof defeated the three-term Republican incumbent, James Oscarson, in the primary race for Nevada State Assembly.
But Dennis Hof would not live to see the general election that November.
Dennis Hof’s Death And Posthumous Election
MediaPunch Inc/Alamy Stock Photo Dennis Hof three weeks before the general election in November 2018.
On Oct. 16, 2018, three weeks shy of Election Night and two days after his 72nd birthday, Dennis Hof was found dead at one of his brothels. As NBC News reported at the time, Hof had been celebrating his birthday all weekend long when his body was discovered by a sex worker and porn actor Ron Jeremy. His cause of death was a heart attack.
He was found dead in the same room where former NBA star Lamar Odom had overdosed three years earlier, an incident which Hof had allegedly been “happy” and “giddy” over because he thought it would “triple his business.”
But even death didn’t stop Hof’s political ambitions. In the race for Nevada’s 36th Assembly District weeks later, Hof defeated Democratic educator Lesia Romanov, putting county officials in an interesting predicament. In the end, another Republican — Gregory Hafen, the general manager of Pahrump Utility Company — was chosen in his place. For voters, the choice was simple: vote Republican, even if the guy is dead.
Meanwhile, Hof’s alleged victims had a different reaction to his death.
“My first reaction when I heard he was dead was excitement,” O’Kane said. “Then happiness. Then I didn’t believe it. I had to have someone go to the scene. They sent me a picture of his body, covered. That’s what it took for me to believe: my rapist is dead.”
Next up, learn about the surprising history of sex work. After that, look through these photos of red light districts from around the world.
