Indian gaming lines up powerful allies

Note: The writer below, an acknowledged adversary of the established gaming tribes, fails to acknowledge the millions that Organized Labor has showered on legislators over the years which is why Organized Labor may be able to block the Compacts in the Assembly absent any amended provisions to the gaming agreements addressing labor’s outstanding concerns. In 2006, Organized Labor contributed more than $13.5 million to candidates in California. In 2006 contributions from Organized Labor ranked second only to “Candidates Self-Financing” among the top ten sources of political campaign contributions by “industry.” More than $240,000 went to Fabian Núñez last year; and Albert Torrico received $140,000. In contrast, Speaker Núñez received $26,800 from Tribal Governments and Torrico, chair of the Assembly Governmental Organization Committee, received $34,400. Overall, Tribal Governments contributed $5.1 million to candidates in California.

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Posted Wednesday, 04.25.07 - 6:00 pm at
(www.laweekly.com)

Tribal Warfare
Indian gaming lines up powerful allies

By MARC COOPER

Even with the current housing slump, a paltry $1.6 million still won’t buy you much of a house on the Westside. Maybe an older 3 + 2 with a fiberglass carport. Better to invest your money in Sacramento, where the same tidy sum can buy you an entire legislative house — in this case, the California state Senate, packed wall to wall with senators ready to serve your every desire. A million six is how much a conglomerate of wealthy Indian gambling tribes spent on recent campaign contributions to key members of the state Democratic leadership, and it garnered an almost instant return.

With little media notice, and certainly with no real public debate, the state Senate fast-tracked a package of five new gambling deals with California’s richest tribes and overwhelmingly voted 22-10 to approve them last week…

…The ram-roding of these measures through the Senate, with an able assist from Governor Schwarzenegger, in no way guarantees their approval in the Assembly, where resistance remains fierce. At the end of last year’s legislative session, the Assembly refused to vote on the agreements. Sticking points were less-than-full rights by labor to organize the low-wage casino workers and lack of sufficient regulatory and fiscal oversight of the casinos. That was the argument put forth by one of the few Democratic senators who voted against the compacts. “I can’t vote for an expansion of gambling,” Senator Sheila Kuehl, D–Santa Monica, said. “I can’t vote for organizations that now refuse to take care of their workers in any fair way that we require of virtually everyone else in the state.”

After last Thursday’s vote in the Senate, prospects in the Assembly were still far from rosy. Northern California Assemblyman Alberto Torrico, a Democrat, said the gambling deals that sprinted through the Senate in no way softened the stiff opposition in the Assembly, led by himself and Democratic House Speaker Fabian Núñez. “Those five compacts... do not have the votes to be ratified... on the Assembly floor,” Torrico said. “I’m certain of that.” …

…The next few months may see a dramatic standoff develop between the Senate’s Democratic leadership, allied with the high-roller tribes, and the Assembly Democrats led by Núñez, who is allied with the powerful hotel workers union that opposes the deal. Núñez has been trying to piece together a side agreement between the tribes and the unions that would deflate the organizing-rights issue and open the way for ratification of the compacts.

But now it looks like the tribes aren’t going to sit patiently to work things out with Núñez. Starting this week, the wealthy Morongo tribe, near Palm Springs (which stands to triple its number of slot machines if the deal is approved), has launched a $1.25-million-a-week campaign of TV advertising spots aimed at winning the hearts and minds of California voters. With the Assembly taking as much as a month or more to get around to considering the compacts, outside observers expect the eventual ad buy from the Morongos to run from $3 million to $5 million as deliberations stretch out...

…Their latest rumored threat seems ominous. Reports now circulate that if the tribes don’t get their way with the Assembly, they will directly intervene with millions of dollars in next February’s special balloting on the issue of extending legislative term limits. This is Fabian Núñez’s pet project — one on which he is banking the extension of his own career. He knows that to come out ahead, this might be the time to go to the mats against the tribes. (Full Story)