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I don’t know if Harrah’s and the Narragansetts were exactly popping champagne corks last week when they learned the Supreme Court isn’t going to give an advisory opinion on the proposed constitutional amendment to allow their West Warwick casino.
Yes, they paid lip service to being "delighted" that the high court is going to "let the people decide," but if I were in their shoes, I would want to know whether the court is going to swat down this scheme BEFORE I spent several million dollars on newspaper, TV and radio ads for a monthslong referenda campaign.
For once, Harrah’s is actually going to be gambling. Gambling isn’t really gambling when you are the house, which is casino operator, Harrah’s’ usual role. The house always wins.
Maybe that’s why the casino industry insists on calling the enterprise "gaming." You are gambling; they are gaming. The system is set up so the house always comes out ahead in the end.
Detractors have accused Harrah’s of "gaming" the legislative system to get the constitutional change on the ballot. And in case you haven’t figured it out, you (or at least your wallet) ARE the game that is being stalked by the casino owners.
Casino supporters now have to go ahead and mount a splashy and expensive campaign to get people to approve Question 1, which could very likely lose. The casino vote was a 50/50 proposition back when it was a simple referendum question. Making it an amendment to the constitution is a much higher hurdle. It is going to take an all-out selling job to put the amendment over.
Then IF it the casino does win at the ballot box, a suit challenging the amendment will be filed. That is what gamblers call a "mortal lock."
And it won’t be a quick trip to the Supreme Court to argue an advisory opinion. A post-election challenge to the provisions of the amendment, even limited to the questions Gov. Donald Carcieri and Attorney General Patrick Lynch wanted the court to answer, would have to slog through the entire judicial system. If the opponents have really good lawyers (which they will) and enough money to pay them (which they might) they could drag this case on for years.
Is this what the Supreme Court had in mind? Nothing but their own traditions and precedents stopped them from going ahead and issuing the advisory opinion Carcieri asked for. Since the justices went so far out of their way two years ago to misdefine a casino as a "lottery," it would hardly have been a stretch for them to concoct a rationale for giving an opinion.
So maybe they decided to let the referendum go forward, let Harrah’s spend their money and the Narragansetts do the campaigning, and they might lose. But if they win, the courts get another chance to shoot the amendment out of the sky before it can get airborne.
Anyone familiar with the game of poker will recognize that tactic as "check and raise." It’s what you do when you know you are holding the big cards.
But I have nothing on which to base an accusation that the court would act out of a desire to prevent a casino rather than to evenhandedly dispense justice as cases come to it, so that is rank speculation on my part. But if I had to bet. ..
But now that the constitutional amendment is going on the ballot for sure we are no longer talking about gambling, we are talking about politics.
To digress briefly, the attorney general doesn’t believe that is a sure thing just yet. In an interview on the day the court declined to rule, Lynch told The Call that the decision meant "the court won’t hear it or can’t consider it pursuant to an advisory opinion. To read it more broadly would be speculative and wrong." He was suggesting a court challenge, rather than an advisory opinion request, might be able to go forward.
Mr. Lynch is a distinguished lawyer and I am not, but it is hard to see how "neither the executive nor judicial branches of the government may interfere with the process of proposing a constitutional amendment" can be read too broadly. Then again, the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution identifies a "right of the people" that"shall not be infringed" but it gets infringed six ways to Sunday, so maybe Lynch has a point.
O.K., time to get back to the point: how the casino effort is starting to really resemble a political campaign now that it is headed for the ballot.
Political reporters will tell you that the best time to cover a presidential campaign is early on, say, the few months leading up to the New Hampshire primary. During that period, all of the players are readily accessible -- reporters, coffee shop patrons and factory workers can walk right up to presidential candidates, shake their hands and engage them in conversation. And most of the time, they will get the candidate’s real response. In the early going, they tend to say what they really think and feel, about actual issues and subjects. The candidates themselves have a much looser attitude, and can actually be funny, engaging and genuine. For reporters, campaigns are worth covering at this point because you can actually convey a portrait of these people who aspire to be leader of the free world
Then right after that, when the primary contests start coming thick and fast, everything changes. Candidates who once were accessible to the point of being bothersome become virtually unavailable. All off-the-cuff, spontaneous moments cease abruptly. Suddenly everyone is reading off the script and not deviating a centimeter from "The Message."
The pros come in and take over, and suddenly everything is slick, polished and, for the most part, phony. Even the candidates can occasionally be heard complaining that they are no longer in control of their own campaigns.
You can see this phenomenon happening with the casino and the Narragansetts.
For a long time now, Chief Sachem Matthew Thomas of the Narragansetts has been one of the most glib, eloquent and loquacious public officials in Rhode Island. He could always be depended upon for a quote whenever there was an issue that touched on the tribe or the casino, and it would usually be barbed and funny at the same time.
When the media was around, he would choose his words carefully, but he would stand his ground until we were finished asking our questions.
But from the day the casino amendment passed the House of Representatives -- the New Hampshire primary moment -- reporters have found themselves chasing the chief down hallways trying to get their questions answered, which we have had to do because his responses have been reduced to predetermined soundbites.
I never saw Thomas read from a script until last Thursday -- when he did it dutifully, not deviating by even a degree. The speech was a bit stiff and had none of the spark and fire that Thomas shows when speaking from his head and heart. Thomas denies this, saying nothing has changed, but the difference is obvious.
The pros seem to be taking over -- the consultants and pollsters and focus-group types (does anybody but me think that the Harrah’s casino spot now running on TV, the one about how Harrah’s helps other businesses in the communities around their casinos, looks, sounds and feels for all the world like a Wal-Mart ad?) appear to be running the show now and Thomas is doing, and saying, what he is told.
If I am right, that would be too bad, and it would be diminishing one of the strongest assets the casino movement has. |
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