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Posted At : August 4, 2009 01:54 PM | Posted By : D McKee
Related Categories:
Regulation,Politics,Kansas
... are visited upon the father, it would seem. The Sen. John Ensign sex-and-payola scandal becomes more incestuous and nepotistic by the day, and even the Las Vegas Review-Journal has slowly realized that this is not A Good Thing for the new-casino ambitions of former Mandalay Resort Group chair Mike Ensign.
By buying the silence of ... I mean, continuing a "pattern of generosity" to senatorial mistress Cynthia Hampton and her money-grubbing husband, Ensign Senior gambled with his reputation. It was a bad bet, a busted hand that's already making casino proponents uneasy and playing right into the hands of the anti-gambling crowd.
Quite simply, the State of Kansas has to decide whether it wants to entrust one of four casino licenses to a man who's been caught paying hush money. Is that indicative of how he'll do business as a casino owner? Ditto the convoluted structuring of the payola so that it would fly below IRS radar. Or do you cross your fingers and hope that, as boss of Prairie Sky, Mike Ensign doesn't sail too close to the wind?
As for Johnny Casino's political sidekick, Mike Slanker, he probably thought hitching a ride to Washington on holier-than-everyone Sen. Ensign's coattails would be a ticket to national prominence. He just never figured this is how he'd become famous:
What many thought/hoped would be a 48-hour story has become nearly a two-month extended engagement that shows no signs of ending soon. Neither is there any telling how much farther down Mike Ensign will be dragged by his son's skirt chasing but for the sake of his reputation and that of the casino industry, this would be a good moment for him to quietly re-retire from the fray.
Back here in Nevada, where the Ensigns are still awash in "juice," regulators could probably be persuaded to take a forgiving view. But Toto, we're not in Nevada anymore.
I guess Mr. Slanker won't be invited to stay over in the Ensign "crib" at the The Family's C Street cult-house, right?
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