It is said that politics makes strange bedfellows.
That has always been true for opponents of expanded legal gambling.
In 1998, Don Siegelman was elected governor of Alabama, one of only two Democrats to beat incumbent Republican governors that year. The center piece of his campaign was a state lottery for education.
Yet, the voters of Alabama rejected the idea the next year, 54-46.
The campaign against creating a state lottery was one of the nastiest in memory. Where did the church groups get much of the million dollars they spent telling Alabama voters about the evils of legal gambling? From Mississippi casinos.
Existing gaming operators have always been willing to team up with opponents of all gambling to stomp out competitors.
But there seems to be a new trend: Now it is proponents of expansion who are finding the most unexpected allies.
It is not hard to see why Barney Frank (D.-MA) could work with Ron Paul (R.-TX) to try to legalize Internet poker in 2008. Frank is often as much a libertarian as a liberal. He believes government should stay out of people’s homes.
And Paul is not really a conservative, like every other member of the GOP in the House of Representatives. He, also, is a libertarian. At a presidential candidate debate, he came out in favor of legalizing heroin and prostitution. So allowing people to gamble is, for him, actually rather tame.
The few libertarians and pure fiscal conservatives left in the GOP, like darkhorse presidential candidate, former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, naturally believe adults should be able to decide for themselves whether they want to gamble. And former Republican office holders, like the Poker Players Alliance’s Alfonse D’Amato and FairPlayUSA’s Tom Ridge, who created the silly terrorist threat levels color codes, are always available if the price is right.
But, how do we explain social conservatives supporting legal gambling? The tea party and other Big Brother types want government in the wedding chapel, bedroom and doctor’s office, particularly if you are female. Yet, Joe Barton (R.-TX) introduced a bill this year to legalize internet poker. Barton is so far right that he actually publicly apologized to BP for President Barack Obama daring to investigate BP’s disastrous Gulf oil spill.
Barney Frank signed on as a co-sponsor; probably the only time he will be working with Barton this year, or any year.
Frank also reintroduced his own Internet gambling legalization bill. Since the GOP now controls the House, he needed a Republican co-author. He found one in John Campbell (R.-CA).
Meanwhile, the leaders of both parties in the Senate sent the U.S. Attorney General a letter that many see as an indication that they also might be considering legalization. The fact that the authors could agree on even a letter is itself amazing.
Harry Reid is the Majority Leader and a moderate Democrat. He represents Nevada, which makes him pro-gambling. Jon Kyl (R.-AZ) is a conservative Republican, a redundancy since all but two Republicans (from Maine) in the Senate are conservative. He is the GOP Whip, the second most powerful Republican. More significantly, he is so opposed to Internet gambling that his name has become synonymous with efforts to outlaw it, as in “the Kyl bill.”
But reading between the lines, the only thing Reid and Kyl agree on is that Internet poker should be operated only by their constituents: Landbased casino companies (Reid) or Indian casino tribes (Kyl).
Are conservative Republicans really becoming pro-gambling? There are a few Tea-Party-types who actually believed their own rhetoric, that everything is a state issue. Rick Perry (R.-TX) said it was OK with him if New York legalized gay marriage – at least, that was his position before he entered the race for president.
Maybe it is wrong to view legal gaming as a partisan issue. After all, the liberal Democrat Kathleen Kennedy Townsend — and you can’t get more Democratic than a Kennedy — ran and lost the governor’s race in 2002 in Maryland in part by opposing slot machines at racetracks.Ironically, the Republican candidate, Robert Ehrlich, who strongly backed racinos to solve the state’s budget crisis, never succeeded. For eight years, the Maryland State Legislature kept killing the proposal. But it wasn’t due to any anti-gambling ideology. The fights were always about who was going to get the money.
Money is, of course, what is driving the latest pushes for legalization. Gambling is seen as a voluntary tax. Every time there is an economic crisis, lawmakers and governors turn to authorizing more gambling as an easy way to raise revenue.
There is so much legal gambling that proposals that would have been considered outrageous just a few years ago don’t even raise eyebrows. Remember when there was no legal gambling in any major American city, other than Las Vegas? Then came the temporary casino in New Orleans in 1995 and the passage of Proposition E in 1996, allowing three casinos in Detroit.
The Michigan election was historic. Never before had the voters approved high-stakes casinos in the face of active opposition.
Now there are casinos in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, put there by the state legislature. Most significantly, casinos are being built in the four largest cities in Ohio, approved by votes of the people.
There is so much legal gambling in the U.S. that it is easy for politicians to say, “We’ve already got casinos, racetracks and a state lottery. What’s the big deal about Internet poker?” Of course, there is so much legal gambling in the U.S. that those casino and racetrack owners, and even the state lottery, respond, “Internet poker is fine, as long as we get to run it.”
Today, the major opposition to expanding legal gambling comes from existing operators, and they don’t particularly care which political party is in power. That is not to say that ideology plays no role.
One-third of the electorate will always be against legal gambling. They are mostly from the religious right, and they always vote. So, special and off-year elections spell doom for proposals for new gaming.
As Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and Ralph Nader demonstrate, the far left also has a few gambling opponents. They are mostly paternalistic, believing poor people should not be gambling or drinking beer or buying hamburgers.
Although the country is growing ever more polarized, the good news for proponents is that gambling is becoming a non-issue. Those of us who are involved in it every day can lose sight of the fact that most politicians don’t know or care about the issue. And, apparently, even the religious right is losing interest.
On November 2, 2010, the voters in Iowa removed three sitting justices of the State Supreme Court, because they had ruled in favor of same sex marriage. How did this religious conservative landslide affect legal gaming? Votes in favor of casinos went up in all 14 counties in Iowa, from an average of 74% in 2002 to 78.8% in 2010.
Joe Barton has not been condemned for coming out in favor of Internet poker. Conservative groups like Focus on the Family used to instantly orchestrate mass letter-writing campaigns against any proposal for expansion of gambling. It was unthinkable that a conservative Republican would actually author such a bill.
Today, the states are desperate for money. And gambling is increasingly being seen as just another way to raise revenue, without raising taxes.
Republished with permission © Copyright 2011, I. Nelson Rose, Prof. Rose is recognized as one of the world’s leading experts on gambling law, and is a consultant and expert witness for governments and industry. His latest books, Internet Gaming Law (1st and 2nd editions), Blackjack and the Law and Gaming Law: Cases and Materials, are available through his website, www.GamblingAndTheLaw.com.