Snatching one victory from the jaws of 0-3 defeat, Las Vegas Sands-backed candidate David Pfaff won a seat on the Irving City Council. This gives Sands at least one key ally in its quest to rezone its Irving real estate for a casino. Having squeaked his way to a runoff, Pfaff clobbered rival Sergio Porres, who made Sands a lightning rod in his pitch to voters. Pfaff, meanwhile, strove to disown his Las Vegas sugar daddy.
It’s a bittersweet victory for Sands, which saw two of its surrogates vanquished last month, despite heavily outspending anti-casino candidates. How unpopular is Sands in that part of Texas? So much so that it actually had to pay “supporters” to show up at civic meetings. If the Irving community wanted a Sands megaresort (“Six Flags Over Adelson”?) that would be one thing. But trying to foist it onto an unwilling community kind of sticks in the craw. As for Sands’ stalking horse, the Lone Star Conservative Action Fund, having been exposed for what it is, its future utility is in doubt, especially after going 1-2 against underfunded opponents.
Meanwhile, Sands has signaled its intention to keep beating its head against the locked doors of the Texas Lege, which might be tractable to sports betting (maybe) but where casinos are a dead letter. And that was before incoming Sands CEO (and ascendant doofus) Clark Dumont dealt Luka Doncic away from the Dallas Mavericks for a gimpy replacement. One would think that Sands’ minority shareholders might balk at this continued waste of money on a bootless political endeavor … but Dumont and mother-in-law Miriam Adelson seem to have bought their complaisance with ever-larger stock repurchases.
Where angels fear to tread. That’s where the new-look Commodity Futures Trading Commission is rushing, continuing to blunder into the field of nationwide, unregulated sports betting. For starters, its timing is exquisitely bad, as this is happening concurrent with a growing backlash against sports wagering. Not only is the rapid growth of OSB alarming some, so are a concomitant spike in gambling addictions, as well as a skyrocketing increase in the harassment of players and coaches (professional and collegiate alike) from unstable bettors. Violence has even broken out at games in Ohio, due to wagering on pint-sized athletes.
Never mind that the CFTC has neither the experience, the expertise nor the infrastructure to ride herd on the OSB industry it’s unleashing. Nor that interstate wagers are still illegal under the Federal Wire Act. The CFTC has become a wholly owned subsidiary of Kalshi. Not only is the latter advised by Donald Trump Jr., whom it signed right after the last election (nothing shady there, no?), it is now headed up by Brian Quintenz, until recently a cryptocurrency mogul, with ties to Kalshi. Look at the guy. He’s typecasting for this administration, with his lily white good looks, perfect teeth and ready-for-Fox News grin. Unfortunately that rictus bespeaks his What-me-worry attitude toward the dangers of overthrowing the past seven years of hard, state-level work of building a regulatory apparatus that can keep an eye on the OSB giants. (Of whom there are one less: Genting Group just called it quits in New York State, its only foothold.)
Doubling down on a terrible Biden administration precedent, Quintenz offered a massive sop to fretful Native American tribes by saying they’re free to get into the prediction-market business. Not only have we not fully seen the ramifications of the Seminole Tribe compact, which designated cyberspace as “tribal lands,” Quintenz proposes to wade even deeper into gambling’s terra incognita. Heck, the legality of sports-betting commodities is still very much being litigating, causing observers to puzzle at the “legislative clarity,” Quintenz imagines. If the federal government intends to get into the OSB fracas, it should at least choose someone qualified, not just another pretty face.
Two wrongs don’t make a right. The Trump administration was deemed to have erred when it tried to kick the Scotts Valley Band of Pomo Indians out of Vallejo. This was an early test of Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum‘s perspicacity and it got a D- at best. The Scotts Valley casino wasn’t green-lit by a federal court but its land remains in trust, so it’s Tribe 1, Burgum 0 for the time being. In addition to a $700 million casino, the Pomo Indians want to build “24 single-family residences, a tribal administration building, parking garage and a 45-acre biological preserve area.” Horrors!
The casino was even designed (above) to be minimally disruptive of the area’s rolling-hills appeal. However, the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation‘s collective nose has been put out of joint. The regard the Pomo Indians as party crashers, Pomo claims on the area notwithstanding. “We are confident that a fair look at the evidence will show Scotts Valley’s claims cannot be sustained. These are not their lands and they never were,” protested Yocha Dehe Chairman Anthony Roberts. To be fair, Burgum’s Biden-era predecessor Deb Haaland appears to have screwed up once more (shades of that Seminole compact) in green-lighting the casino on her way out the door.
In her haste to approve the Scotts Valley application, Haaland allowed her underlings to ignore “any of the extensive evidence submitted by other tribes—including local Patwin people.” Seeing a lack of due diligence, Burgum pounced. First, he said the DOI would reconsider the evidence, which was only proper. Not a month later, he pulled casino approval altogether. The court has smacked it down. Judge Trevor McFadden—a Trump I appointee, ironically—ruled that it should strictly have been a Scotts Valley/DOI matter. Burgum still has standing in the matter but the Yocha Dehe, Kletsel Dehe Wintun Nation and United Auburn Indian Community were all kicked off the case.
For the moment, the Pomo Indians look like winners. Haaland’s precipitous handling of the compact still makes her a loser, in our eyes, and Burgum’s similar haste made what should have been a deliberative process look suspiciously like political point-scoring. We’re not sure we agree with Judge McFadden’s ruling, as the competing tribal claims should be at the heart of the matter, not collateral. (At least to our unlawyered eye.) But it seems like a royal mess, one that both the outgoing Biden administration and incoming Trump one could have avoided.
Finally … in another court case, Bally’s Corp. has settled with a pair of Texas-based crisis actors, Phillip Aronoff and Richard Fisher. This duo cried foul when Bally’s, abiding by the terms of its agreement with Chicago, offered 25% stakes in Bally’s Chicago to female and minority investors. This ruffled Fisher and Aronoff’s delicate feelings and the duo sued … or so we are meant to believe. Perhaps the two really are stupid enough to put their money into a casino that’s bearing an increasing resemblance to the RMS Titanic. But we don’t think so. This has always smacked of trumped-up litigation meant to demonize women and people of color for daring to want a slice of the action. (For the record, the minority set-aside was a tremendous flop with prospective investors.)
At any rate, Aronoff and Fisher now have their fuck-you money from Bally’s, from the looks of it. Their lawyer “declined to comment on whether Fisher and Aronoff had purchased any shares of the offering since it had been opened up to other investors.” We’ll take that as a big, fat “No.” This was never about investing in a casino and had everything to do with sticking it to the darkies. (It is worth noting that Bally’s is the only major casino company not run by white men.) We look forward to the next Bally’s quarterly filing to learn how much this pound of flesh has cost it.
The article about people betting up to $5000 on grade school kids is just sad and disgraceful. What the hell is wrong with people.