SACRAMENTO -- As the election battle over an Indian gambling initiative heats up in California, Nevada casinos increasingly are becoming targets in the political debate in the Golden State.
Advocates of Proposition Five, the gambling initiative, score Nevada casinos every chance they get for being the primary financial backers of the opposition campaign to the ballot measure. They gave $700,000 in the first half of this year.
But state records show that California politics are nothing new for a handful of the major casinos. Over the past decade, especially in recent years, seven casinos have spent $3.4 million on lobbying and political contributions in this neighboring state that provides about a third of their customers.
Most of the money came from Circus, Circus Enterprises, Inc., Mirage Resorts Inc., and Primadonna Resorts, Inc. But there also were expenditures by Boyd Gaming Corp., MGM Grand and Station Casinos, according to reports filed with the California Secretary of State.
These figures jump dramatically when political expenditures by two companies with business interests in both Nevada and California were added.
Hilton Hotels and Hollywood Park, which owns Boomtown, together have spent $5.3 million on lobbying and campaign donations since 1987.
That brings the total for major political spending here by casinos with Nevada interests to $8.7 million in the last ten years.
These figures represent the minimum amount that likely has been spent in California by Nevada gambling interests, especially in the case of campaign donations.
The contributions are based primarily on reports that only must be filed by donors giving more than $10,000. Thus smaller contributions by companies or individuals with casino ties aren't included and aren't easily identified in a state where $296 million was raised in the 1996 election cycle and only had to be disclosed in paper reports.
Similarly, the $144 million spent lobbying last year was only detailed in paper reports.
Except for Hilton and Hollywood Park, political spending by major Nevada casinos in California for the most part has been a recent phenomena that coincide with the rise of Indian casinos here in the 1990s. Between 1987-88 and 1991-92, the major Nevada casinos all together spent less than $100,000 in California.
Since then, the spending has been weighted heavily in favor of lobbying by nearly two to one over campaign contributions.
If it hadn't been for their contributions to defeat Proposition Five this year, the Nevada casinos would only have given $615,000 to campaigns in the past decade. Hilton Hotels boosted the anti-Proposition Five donations another $200,000.
Instead, the Nevada casinos have focused on lobbying, spending $2.1 million to influence the California Legislature and governor since 1993.
Their interests primarily were bills that dealt with Indian gambling, the state lottery, horseracing and card rooms, according to lobbying reports filed with the state.
During this period, the governor and Legislature spent several years debating a major new state scheme for regulation of card rooms and different approaches to Indian gambling. The state has approved agreements, known as a compacts, on Indian gambling that have been signed by 11 tribes so far.
Proposition Five would allow most current gambling tribes, which opposed the compact approved by Legislature, to continue operating their current electronic video games that the governor considers illegal slot machines.
These tribes currently operate more than 10,000 video games without a compact as required by federal law.
Jim Mulhall of the Nevada Resort Association, which represents the state's major casinos, said they support the approved compacts, but strongly oppose gambling by Proposition Five tribes as unfair competition.
"We do not support the notion that gaming should be conducted illegally," Mulhall said.
While the figures are far from certain, passage of Proposition Five could cost Nevada at least $600 million of the $1.5 billion it now gets annually from California gamblers, according to a report by BancBoston Robertson Stephens, an equity research firm based in San Francisco.
By comparison total revenue for Las Vegas casinos is about $6 billion a year, according to Bill Eadington of the Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming at the University of Nevada, Reno.
But he stressed that regardless of whether Proposition Five passes, gambling is likely to increase here as tribes with compacts become legitimate and more high tech. This means changes both for California and Nevada.
The impact could be greater on Nevadans than on their state's gaming companies, which could expand their business or move their assets to other states.
"Nevada in varying degrees feel somewhat threatened by this," Eadington said. "It's not something that has sprung up in the public attention very much. Some companies are very concerned. Everybody should be very concerned."
OPTIONAL ADD:
The casinos that showed their greatest concern by spending to influence California policy and politics in the last decade were:
- Circus, Circus, which expended a total of $1.76 million, including $1.4 million on lobbying.
- Mirage with a total of $746,000, including $418,000 for campaign contributions.
- Caesars with a total of $431,534 including $267,501 for campaigns.
- Primadonna with $259,000 total, including $201,000 for campaigns.
SECOND ADD:
Here are the totals spent in two-year cycles by companies with Nevada casino interests. The first figure is the total spent in the given year on lobbying and campaign donations; the second figure is the amount spent by just Nevada companies; the third figure is the amount spent by the Nevada-California companies of Hilton Hotels and Hollywood Park (numbers have been
rounded off):
- 1997-98 (through first six months of 1998 for most companies): $2.2 million; $1.4 million; $839,000.
- 1995-96: $3.4 million; $1.7 million; $1.7 million.
- 1993-94: $929,000; $200,000; $729,000.
- 1991-92: $1 million; $46,000; $958,000.
- 1989-90: $508,000; $0; $508,000.
- 1987-88: $576,000; $48,500; $527,000.
Link to: California's Modern Indian War
California's Modern Indian War-WHITE BACKGROUND