2.10.08Labor leader sees casino as Port Huron’s best bet
By MIKE CONNELL
Times Herald
If a casino does open in Port Huron, and the odds look about as long as drawing for an inside straight, they should put a bronze bust of Dick Cummings in the lobby.
Cummings is president of the Michigan Machinists, a former leader of the county AFL-CIO and a tireless laborer in the vineyards of the United Way of St. Clair County. He’s also a founding father of the effort to bring a casino to Michigan’s easternmost city.
Fifteen years ago, he supported the campaign to put a gambling den in the downtown Sears building, left empty in 1989 when the retailer shuffled off to Birchwood Mall. That effort failed on July 13, 1993, when city voters rejected it, 5,120 to 4,751.
Seven years later, Cummings and Don Reynolds, owner of the Thomas Edison Inn, led a second campaign. They launched it a few weeks after the Point Edward casino opened directly across the St. Clair River, maybe a 3-wood from the inn’s front lawn.
Many people who opposed the casino in 1993, and I count myself among them, had changed their minds by 2000. The folks feeding the slots in Point Edward didn’t exactly look like gangsters and degenerates. In fact, they looked a lot like us.
That’s because they were, of course. Then and now, the majority of visitors to Point Edward and Hiawatha Slots were middle-class Michiganders out for dinner and a giggle. No harm. No foul. No fear.
In the summer of 2001, a second casino advisory vote won approval, 3,111 to 2,628.
■ For 6½ years, Cummings has been a warrior for the casino. It’s a crusade, a jihad, a holy war of sorts.
His quest begins and ends with jobs. Early on, he won a promise from the casino developers that they would hire locally and pay union wages.
Port Huron’s unemployment rate has been in double digits for most of the Bush presidency. This past Christmas, one of every seven workers in the city was jobless. In rough numbers, the local unemployment rate is double the state average and triple the national average.
So much for statistics. From his office at the United Way, Cummings has seen the suffering behind those numbers. He can tell you of mothers who go hungry so their babies can eat, and of fathers who put off medical care until the ambulance arrives. He can tell you of desperation and despair, heartbreak and horror, homelessness and hopelessness.
He can slice through your heart with nothing sharper than the truth, and bring you to your knees with nothing heavier than a prayer.
“Most people don’t want a handout,” he says. “They want a job.”
Amen, Dick. Amen.
■ Year after year, the economy worsens, the jobs disappear and our government does the one thing it does best.
Nothing.
Speeches we’ve heard, all sass and sanctimony. Games we’ve watched, ruses and ploys. What we’ve heard isn’t too hopeful. What we’ve seen isn’t much progress. After 6½ years, a Port Huron casino bill has yet to earn a vote from a congressional committee, although that may change this week.
What hasn’t changed is the strength of the opposition.
In 2002, it was Nevada’s Harry Reid, now the most powerful individual on Capitol Hill, who put the kibosh on Debbie Stabenow’s bill in the Senate. A series of bills in the House have been shot down by influential Republicans, including Brighton’s Mike Rogers and the shameless Tom Delay, self-styled czar of K Street.
The fact that Jack Abramoff was paid $14 million and change to nuke the Port Huron bill, among other chores, may or may not be relevant. You decide.
The good news is Abramoff has gone away for a spell — five years and 10 months without a show of good behavior. The bad news is his old clients had no problem buying new help. In the past week, Port Huron’s opponents have launched a couple of advertising campaigns that smell worse than Chemical Valley in an east wind.
In the wake of the Abramoff scandal, one would think our representatives in Washington could see through such blatant deceit and manipulation. If they can’t, then God help us, because no one else will.
■ Last week, Cummings hopped over to Washington to watch the House Natural Resources Committee debate the Stupak-Miller bill.
“I think it went well,” he said on his return, “even though Detroit was there in full force.”
The casino’s most intractable opponents begin with Kwame and his Mommy — Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, leader of the influential Congressional Black Caucus.
The Saginaw Chippewa, who made Abramoff a multi-millionaire, continue to bankroll the opposition. So does MGM Mirage, the gambling empire built by Kirk Kerkorian, who’s 90 and has amassed a billion dollars for each of his nine decades.
In one way or another, most of the players have money riding on the outcome.
Many of the supporters have received generous campaign contributions from casino promoter Mike Malik and his good friends, the Ilitch family. Most of the opponents have profited from knowing the fine people at MGM, which owns the most profitable of Detroit’s three casinos, and the Saginaw Chippewa, owner of the most profitable of Michigan’s 20 casinos.
■ If I were a betting man — and anything more than 10 minutes at a slot machine is my idea of purgatory — I’d say the odds of Dick Cummings seeing himself in bronze are slim.
Approval from the 49-member Natural Resources Committee is anything but certain, and that’s only the first of many hurdles. On the floor of the House, the measure would not receive a vote without the blessings of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, the majority leader, who are more than a little concerned at the threat to Democratic solidarity, an oxymoron even in the best of times.
Should the measure win approval in the House, a companion bill would need to wend its way through the Senate and Harry Reid’s tender mercies. And even then, legal challenges are all but promised by Detroiters who believe that if their city loses even one dollar to Port Huron, it is one dollar too many.
For all this, Cummings sounded optimistic Friday when we chatted. His belief is that Port Huron has facts on its side while what the opposition mostly has is greed.
“Hopefully, it gets to the House floor and gets thoroughly debated,” he said. “Detroit is ganging up on us, but facts are facts. People with more common sense are seeing through the smoke.”
And what about the Senate?
“I think we’re going to get there,” he said. “Senator (Carl) Levin and Senator (Debbie) Stabenow are in full support, and so is the governor. I think we’ll get a fair hearing.”
It almost seems too much to ask.
Columnist Mike Connell can be reached at (810) 989-6259 or mconnell@gannett.com.
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