Dennis Hof made a career out of being a brothel owner and reality TV star, then ran for political office. Despite sexual assault allegations and an official investigation — and his own death — he won the seat.
HBODennis Hof was inspired to get into politics by Donald Trump.
He 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.
Dennis Hof did certainly have some things in common with the president. He was never a part of the Washington system, starred on a reality television show, spent most of his adult life as a businessman, and somehow 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.
Even more than Trump himself, Dennis Hof seemed antithetical to the core values espoused by traditional Republicans. The brothel he ran — the “world famous BunnyRanch,” as he called it — was legal thanks to a Nevada law that legalizes prostitution in counties with a population under 700,000 people. Still, it was a far cry from “traditional family values.” And despite that, Hof unseated a three-term Republican incumbent.
In an even more shocking twist, Dennis Hof died three weeks before election night. He won the election posthumously. America’s most famous pimp won an election he wasn’t alive to see.
How?
Dennis Hof’s Rise To Prominence In The Nevada Brothel Business
Hof was never one to shy away from controversy or keep his words polite. This is how Dennis Hof introduced himself to readers of his memoir:
“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 the moment, he said, made it so that he could not resist a “glammed-up blonde” for the rest of his life. He mentions that he would sleep with a brunette as well, so long as she was “hot.”
HBOHof became famous thanks to the HBO series Cathouse, among other appearances.
But he hadn’t planned, originally, to get into the sex work business. Really, his first business venture was owning a handful of gas stations. He was young then, a 22-year-old who had saved and worked his way up to having enough money to live comfortably. He had a wife name Shirley who had gotten pregnant and given birth to their first daughter four years earlier, with a second 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 asked for the rent.
As he explained, he just “couldn’t get enough of [sex].” That realization came later though, in 1972, after 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, he could make use of their services whenever he wanted with no charge.
He did so frequently, and soon enough Hof realized he “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 population was so small — less than 700,000 at least — the law allowed prostitution, 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.
“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, allegations later levied against him suggested that the rule applied for any customer except for Dennis Hof.
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, 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, and 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 had 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 violent and exploitative, generally speaking, but Dennis Hof, as he presented himself, was not.
In fact, bits of his own memoir — albeit, the bits penned by girls who worked for him and psychiatrist Dr. Sheenah Hankin — shatter the image he had tried to cultivate.
Krissy Summers, one of the contributor’s, wrote of Hof that he would sleep with a girl “one minute after her legal birthday, then put her right to work, as if this is something real men brag about.” Another prostitute 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.
He wrote it 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,” Hankin 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 own book. Then, in 2018, after he saw Donald Trump’s bid at the American presidency pay off, Hof decided to follow suit and involve himself in 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 said in an NPR interview. “He’s rich, he’s famous, he’s got nerves of steel. He likes hot girls.”
Hof likened Trump to Christopher Columbus, saying that the president was a “pioneer” for people like Hof to get into politics. But even if Hof conducted business the way he said he did, putting a man in his line of work in office would have once been a preposterous idea. According to those around him, though, Hof didn’t conduct himself like he claimed.
Jenifer O’Kane, one of Hof’s former workers, described her experience to the New Yorker. 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 said. “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,” taking another call from his hero’s playbook.
“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.”
WENN Rights Ltd/Alamy Stock PhotoDennis Hof with Cami Parker, the person who described him as a “soulless pimp.”
Hof ran as a Republican candidate, a voter demographic that typically comprises 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.”
“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 [sic].”
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 said.
To Hof’s credit, he was right. The people were so disillusioned with typical politicians, in fact, that they decided a dead outsider would be more effective than a living politician.
Dennis Hof’s Death And Posthumous Election
MediaPunch Inc/Alamy Stock Photo Dennis Hof died of natural causes, partly related to his diabetes.
On Oct. 16, 2018, three weeks shy of Election Night and two days after Hof’s 72nd birthday, he died. As NBC News reported at the time, Hof had been celebrating his birthday all weekend long when his body was discovered by a prostitute and porn actor Ron Jeremy.
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 “giddy” over.
“Dennis Hof was so happy and giddy,” said T.J. Moore, one of Hof’s former madam’s. “He thought it was going to triple his business. Physically, it made me sick that someone could actually be that way over another human being.”
But even death didn’t stop Hof’s political ambitions. In the race for Nevada’s 36th Assembly District, 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.
Any Republican would be better than a Democrat, voters decided.
Meanwhile, Hof’s former employees and 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 prostitution around the world. After that, check out why the mayor of Amsterdam has intended to open up a brothel run by prostitutes.
