7.31.07By Scott Van Voorhis
Boston Herald Business Reporter
The Mashpee Wampanoags and their investment backers are not the only ones cheering this weekend’s landmark casino vote in Middleboro.
The town’s overwhelming endorsement of a $1 billion casino resort is being hailed as good news by other gambling developers - from local racetrack owners angling to bring in long banks of slot machines to veteran casino developers with granderplans.
The tribe’s casino drive has put expanded gambling back on the state’s political agenda, gambling boosters say.
"As far as I am concerned, I think the (proposed) Native American casino has put the issue front and center and has had a positive effect in causing the state to have to make a decision on where they are going to go with gaming," said Louis Ciarlone, head of Local 123, which represents workers at Suffolk Downs.
That would be a major shift from just over a year ago, when a proposal that was pushed by racetrack owners in the state to roll out Las Vegas-style slot machines went down to a humiliating and lopsided defeat on Beacon Hill.
But this spring the Mashpee Wampanoags were finally recognized by the federal government as a tribe.
That opened the door for the tribe to acquire land and, with it, the potential to eventually open some form of gambling complex.
Now others, especially racetrack owners, are hoping to capitalize on the political momentum the tribe’s casino quest has generated.
"I think there is no question that it moves the issue forward," said Clyde Barrow, a professor and gambling industry expert at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.
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