COLUMN: Jim Brunelle

If a racetrack can have slot machines, why can't Indian tribes?

Copyright © 2005 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

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Frederick J. Moore III, the Passamaquoddy tribal representative to the Legislature, had a pointed question for his fellow lawmakers and for Maine voters in general last week.

How, he asked, can we authorize a slot machine operation for a racetrack in Bangor and yet prohibit a similar enterprise for the state's Indian tribes?

He was referring to bills coming up at the State House to allow Maine's two largest tribes to set up slot-machine gambling operations on their reservations or even establish a racino - a combination racetrack and slots casino - somewhere in Washington County, most likely Calais.

The question is both pertinent and difficult to respond to, considering that in November 2003 voters simultaneously authorized the installation of hundreds of slot machines at the Bangor Raceway but flatly rejected construction of a gigantic Indian casino in southern Maine.

At the time, some tribal leaders insisted the split decisions represented a clear example of racial bias against Indians, an assertion promptly denied by just about everybody outside the reservations.

In fact, the referendum on the proposed $650 million gambling resort was fought on cultural, economic and social grounds rather than racial.

Voters came to accept former Gov. Angus King's view that such a huge enterprise would "drastically change our image from family, integrity, environment, quality and work ethic to slots, booze and sex," while most of the profits would go west to the Indian casino's Las Vegas backers.

Meanwhile, the racino initiative seemed like much smaller potatoes and was promoted as more wholesomely aimed at rescuing a foundering harness racing industry.

In addition, its ads promised, proceeds from the operation would provide "medicine for seniors, new jobs, new revenues with no new gaming sites, scholarships for students, healthy farms and open spaces."

The scheme simply didn't have the organized, ad-rich opposition that the more threatening casino proposal did. Not only that, an almost identical referendum proposal to install video gambling machines at Scarborough Downs had been rejected by a 3-2 margin three years earlier. There was no reason to believe this one would fare any better. As a consequence, racinos slipped quietly into law while everybody was looking the other way.

Indifference and inattention aside, the decision to turn Bangor Raceway into a giant slot machine emporium with a little harness racing on the side gives the Passamaquoddy Tribe and Penobscot Nation fresh ammunition in pressing for slots operations of their own.

It's not a new proposal, by any means. The Passamaquoddies first proposed building a $20 million casino in Calais a dozen years ago. That plan, touted as a way to create hundreds of jobs in Maine's poorest region, was scuttled first by the Legislature and later by the courts.

Unlike the tribes of other states, Maine Indians don't qualify for federal gambling privileges because the 1980 Land Claims Settlement Act subjected them to state regulation on that issue.

And the state has never shown much interest in allowing its tribes to become the conduit for turning Maine into a big gambling mecca. Indeed, it has traditionally fought all efforts by the gambling industry to establish slot machines here, although not always successfully.

Three decades ago, the Legislature specifically outlawed coin-operated slot machines as part of a comprehensive gambling control law. The gaming crowd soon created a loophole in the law by inventing a machine that could be activated electronically without actually requiring players to insert coins directly into the machines.

This resulted in such a proliferation of new electronic devices that the Legislature banned them as well. The gambling industry, backed by numerous veterans' groups and charitable organizations that had profited from the contraptions, initiated a statewide referendum in 1980 to overturn the ban.

The effort was unsuccessful. Maine voters decisively rejected slot machines of any kind by a solid 3-2 margin (the same spread by which they would reject slots at race tracks in the spring of 2000).

In 2003 the racino question passed with a close-but-clear 53 percent margin. But closeness doesn't matter; when it comes to balloting, a single vote can determine the "will of the people."

That's why Moore's question becomes embarrassingly relevant now. How can we say yes to a racino operation sponsored by outside gambling interests but say no to essentially the same idea by Maine's Indian tribes?

More to the point, how can we say no this time without the answer coming off as arbitrary, unfair and even a bit racist?

Jim Brunelle comments on politics and other issues for the Portland Press Herald. He can be contacted at:

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