Legalized Gambling Grift in Missouri: Big Money Wins in Another State
If you want a good look at the law-corrupting influence of big money on sports gambling legalization at the state level, then take a gander at the situation today in Missouri. An initiative there on the ballot to adopt legalization, supported by $30 million from online sports betting industry giants FanDuel and DraftKings, supposedly passed on Nov. 4.
But the vote counting hasn’t finished, and the margin of victory has shrunk to less than one-half of 1%. This means, according to Missouri law, that any citizen of the state who voted this month against gambling legalization — “any person whose position on a question was defeated by less than one percent of the votes” — can request a recount.
This clearly stated law isn’t so simple as it sounds in plain English, not if you ask JoDonn Chaney, the beefy spokesperson for Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, whose office oversees elections and ballot initiatives.
OI’ JoDonn artfully dodged Missouri Independent news reporter Rudi Keller’s question this week about who can rightfully request a ballot initiative vote-recount, by saying in an email response that “only certain groups, not anybody, can request it.”
First of all, that’s BS according to a former Missouri state legislator, Wes Shoemyer, who headed a group called Missouri’s Food for America, which led opposition to a ballot initiative in 2014. Shoemyer said that his successful request for a recount was based on his standing as an individual voting citizen of the state, not as representative of any group.
“The voter has more rights than the treasurer,” Shoemyer told Keller. “Anybody who wants to come out and say they voted ‘no’ can ask for it.”
So, exactly what “groups” is JoDonn vaguely referring to in his email response to Keller’s inquiry, anyway?
The law governing Missouri voting law, cited above, clearly indicates there’s one group who can legally request a recount, and it includes any person in the state who legally voted against the initiative. In the case of the gambling legalization ballot in Missouri, this would demonstrably be somewhere close to — or possibly exceeding, depending on a recount’s results — half of the state’s nearly 3 million voters!
By obfuscating on Keller’s questions in a way that might otherwise excite some elements among the unwashed masses to request a recount, Ashcroft and his PR flack are clearly signaling they have no interest in taking a closer look at the voting results.
Keller reports that Ashcroft’s office weaseled lawyerly a little further on the question of who’s entitled to request a recount:
“[JoDonn] Chaney said Ashcroft and previous secretaries have interpreted the law to mean only people with a direct interest in the issue can request a recount. ‘As we are not an adjudicatory body, any change in this interpretation would need to come from the courts,’ Chaney said.”
Please define “direct interest,” would you, JoDonn?
Doesn’t this describe a legally voting citizen in the state of Missouri — on whichever side of the gambling legalization issue they stand? They’re the ones who made their positions known by voting yea or nay, and whose communities will be living with the results of the gambling ballot initiative, right?
Don’t they have a “direct interest?”
By his choice of words, ol’ JoDonn nearly exposes his boss’s hand. Insert “special” for “direct” and connect it to “interest” — and what do you get? Ah, yes… what we’ve all come to know and love about the influence of special interests in politics!
In the case of the gambling legalization question in Missouri, proposed Amendment №2, it was FanDuel and DraftKings who ponied up tens of millions of dollars for the ballot initiative campaign called “Winning for Missouri Education (WME)” to collect the required 172,000 signatures and get the question on the voting ballot.
Maybe I’m going out on a limb here, but I feel safe in assuming JoDonn and Ashcroft would credit “WME” as having a direct interest.
On the other side of the special-interest equation, Caesars Entertainment’s casinos committed $15 million for a campaign called “Missourians Against the Deceptive Online Gambling Amendment (MADOGS)” to encourage voters to oppose the amendment. Their reason? They thought, if it passed, they would be limited to sports gambling licenses at only one of their several casinos across the state.
Again, I’m pretty sure that MADOGA would also be accepted by Ashcroft’s office as a group that possesses a direct interest in the ballot initiative voting results. They would be permitted by the secretary of state to request a recount, right?
But that ain’t gonna happen, because a funny thing happened on the way to the polling booth. Three weeks before election day, the casinos abruptly pulled the plug on their anti-legalization campaign.
No more ads in the media. Nothing. Zippo. Silence.
Caesars did a one-eighty. Somehow or other, they were now assured they’d receive sports-betting licenses for all of their various locations in the state.
You can surmise for yourself about how this sudden change in strategy by the casino company came about. Call me a crazy conspiracy theorist (CCT), but I’m seeing clouds of cigar smoke in private back rooms, and hearing the clinking of martini glasses.
And yet, despite the vacuum of anti-legalization campaign media created when Caesars reversed their strategy, opposition to the ballot initiative among Missouri’s voting public maintained prodigious grassroots strength, right up to voting day.
Hence, the increasingly slim margin of victory for the initiative’s supporters, which has shrunk now to within the legally defined range that qualifies it for a recount.
However, without benefit of a fair hearing at the secretary of state’s office, unless the first-round tabulation of remaining uncounted votes determines that opponents of gambling legalization outnumbered those in favor, you can kiss any chance of a recount ever taking place.
The casinos and online sports gambling titans have formed an unholy alliance and they don’t want a recount.
And so it goes…
For those of you feeling nauseous about the obvious fix taking place in Missouri, to soothe your angst I offer you this video of Jay Ashcroft’s father, John Ashcroft, former US Attorney General under George W. Bush, famously singing “Let the Eagle Soar.”
But I warn you — if you do watch it — keep the barf bag handy!