After four months of vacillation, Gov. Pat Quinn (D-IL) has gotten off the fence and announced his opposition to multiple racinos within Illinois (and to slot routes at airports). Noting that the state already subsidizes the sport of kings, he took a swipe at the anti-free market concept of using casinos to prop up the horsey set, what he called, “the very notion that we have to have seven more gambling locations to, quote, ‘save horseracing.'” Quinn’s counterproposal downsizes the Legislature’s planned mega-expansion of gambling from 14 new locations to five, but preserves the Chicago casino on city fathers have placed so much hope. And, in a move reminiscent of some of New Jersey‘s former excesses, he would ban casinos from donating to the campaign coffers of elected officials, an overreaching impediment to free speech.
If Quinn’s Expansion Lite plan effectively kills any sort of legislative action … well, there are worse outcomes. Illinois casinos are coming off historic lows in revenue. If they regain their former fiscal luster, it’ll be a multi-year effort. The governor, meanwhile, ought to knock some sense into ESPN blogger Bob Ehalt, whose advocacy of casino expansion in New York boils down to, ‘We must save horseracing!’ Ehalt’s implication is that slot players are low-forehead types, unable to appreciate the fine points of equitation. If Empire State voters want casinos, they should support them for their own sake and buck snobs like Ehalt as though he were Justin Leparoux at the Bourbon Stakes:
