House GOP leader woos gaming industry

Grey on GOP

Tom Grey, head of the National Coalition Against Gaming Expansion, denounced politicians' courting of the gambling industry.

"The GOP now stands for Gambling's Own Party, and (Dennis) Hastert now confirms that," Grey said. "Leaders are seeing it as a feeding trough, and he's leading the stampede for it.

"A lot of people in Congress want that money, and they sold out, or they're afraid of the gambling money being used against them. Both parties are equal opportunity pigs, at this point."

House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., denounced efforts by members of his party to control the gaming industry as the work of dissidents -- and collected more than $500,000 in gaming industry donations for the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee.

At a Wednesday news conference at the Culinary Training Center, Hastert said the majority of his party didn't hold the strident anti-gaming views of Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va. And he broke ranks with Texas Republican Tom DeLay in the flap over the expansion of the Las Vegas Convention Center, saying that he believed it wasn't an issue that the federal government should be involved in.

In both cases, Hastert said he was sticking by the Republican Party's commitment to shifting power from the federal government to the state and local levels.

"Municipal bonds should be at the discretion of cities and municipalities," Hastert said. "That's where it should stay."

DeLay is promoting a bill that would restrict the ability of local governments to issue tax-free municipal bonds for the benefit of private businesses. He has used the Las Vegas Convention Center expansion project as an example of what he sees as abuses of municipal bond use. Venetian owner Sheldon Adelson, a long-time GOP contributor, gave $1,000 to DeLay's election fund in March, according to Federal Election Commission records. That's the maximum amount an individual can give to a candidate in any one year.

Bill Weidner, president of the Venetian, said he had a "philosophical" debate with Hastert on the issues raised by the DeLay bill Tuesday evening, but that their conversation didn't deal directly with the Las Vegas Convention Center expansion.

"The basis we're objecting to is 'Why spend taxpayer money needlessly?' " Weidner said. "The federal government is granting the tax-exempt status to the bonds."

But Weidner also reiterated the Venetian's support for the Republican Party. Adelson has donated $225,000 to the Republican election fund over the past two years.

"Certainly the Republican Party, in the long term, is much more attractive than the Democratic Party," Weidner said. "That's been our view for a long time."

Meanwhile, Hastert and five congressmen tried to assure other industry officials that the Republican leadership remained supportive of Nevada's most important industry.

"We're not going to increase taxes, and we're not going to pick on any one industry," Hastert said.

Rep. Jerry Weller, R-Ill., was more blunt.

"We want to reinforce the fact that as long as there's a Republican Congress, there will be no (federal) taxation of gaming, and no new regulations restricting gaming," Weller said.

Both Hastert and Weller have riverboat casinos within their Illinois districts. Hastert's visit was engineered by Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., who called the speaker's first visit to Las Vegas an "educational opportunity to see what's going on in Nevada."

"The most important thing that came out of this meeting was complete and open communication," said Gov. Kenny Guinn, who met with Hastert and the congressional delegation at a fundraising breakfast at Mandalay Bay. In stressing the importance of gaming to Nevada, Guinn pointed out that "more than 70 percent of our revenues come from gaming, and you (the federal government) own 87 percent of our land."

Hastert's visit was the most prominent effort yet by Republicans to woo the gaming industry back to the GOP.

The gaming industry has been donating more heavily to the GOP in recent years, according to a recent study by the General Accounting Office. In 1998, the Republican National Committee and the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee received $1.38 million in contributions from the gaming industry, up 680 percent from 1992, according to a report by the General Accounting Office. Their Democratic counterparts received $850,000, up 160 percent.

But prominent industry officials, such as Mirage Resorts Inc. Chairman Steve Wynn and MGM Grand Inc. Chairman Terry Lanni, dismayed with the anti-gambling influence of the religious right in the Republican Party, have vowed to assist the Democrats in their attempt to wrest control of the House from the GOP in 2000.

Wynn has held several fundraisers for House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt of Missouri, who hopes to wrest control of the speaker's chair from Hastert in 2000, and has donated $250,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. But Hastert suggested that Wynn, Lanni and their respective companies would be better off keeping the Republicans in power.

"We are for less regulation, less taxation," Hastert said. "My counterpart in the House (Gephardt) has stated that he wants to raise taxes."

Weller said he has met with both Wynn and Lanni, having what he called a "very positive meeting." And Rep. Frank LoBiondo, R-N.J., the chairman of the Congressional Gaming Caucus, said he planned to visit Las Vegas again in the near future to meet personally with gaming officials.

"I want to make sure the properties here understand our interest in the industry overall," LoBiondo said. "We shouldn't be fighting these battles individually ... we need to stand shoulder-to-shoulder."

Prior to his Culinary tour, Hastert collected more than $500,000 in contributions at a fundraising breakfast held by the American Gaming Association at Mandalay Bay.

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