Gamers can’t anoint their way out of this

By Jon Ralston

Wednesday, April 9, 2008 | 2:01 a.m.

Of all the anointments the gamers have successfully accomplished Gov. Bob Miller, Gov. Kenny Guinn, Gov. Jim Gibbons (sort of) none has been more important to the industry than the current attempt.

This time, though, the casinos are not intent on clearing the field or making the race an illusion for their candidate of choice, the one they believe will best carry out their oligarchic wishes. In 2008 the anointment is geared toward not a person but an idea, the most direct assault ever on their bottom lines. It is an idea whose time they know has come, but only if people get a chance to vote on it.

The industry will do almost anything to stop the teachers union’s proposal to raise the gaming tax to 9.75 percent from 6.75 percent at a time when almost any other solution to the state’s budget woes has been rejected by their past anointed one, Gibbons. And now that Judge Miriam Shearing has declared the initiative meets legal muster, the state Supreme Court is the last chance for the gamers to prevent a landslide win for the teachers in November. (Not that this is relevant, but most members of the high court also are Strip anointees.)

Never has a gaming tax increase had such potential appeal to the masses, thanks to Gov. No New Taxes, which is why the industry’s desperate attempt to keep the proposal off the ballot is drenched in irony.

Consider: The governor is opposed to the initiative but his coattails are shorter than any chief executive’s in recent memory, with room, perhaps, for a few folks from Mina. Gibbons, the man the Strip helped elect, is now useless to the industry as it battles this 44 percent tax increase.

The purpose of an anointment is to prevent the public from ever having a real choice. But when races happen despite the best-laid anointments, they are facades. In 1998, Mayor Jan Jones got in but couldn’t keep up with Guinn’s Anointment Express. Industry members don’t want to take that chance with this year’s anointment they believe they cannot afford a race, literally and figuratively.

Whatever kind of campaign the gamers might run against the teachers’ plan if it gets to the ballot, it will have little impact. They can have respected community leaders (where is Guinn?) play Cassandra or Chicken Little. They can attack the business community for not being part of the solution. And they can try to get people to fret about job losses and projects drying up.

But none of it will work. Years of pent-up anger against the industry for its political hegemony and grow-grow-grow mentality (fueling it here and doing it elsewhere) are about to explode and wise men in the industry understand the consequences.

The real problem for the industry now is, there is no they there. The gamers have never been monolithic and they are as Balkanized as ever. How silly does it look that the Nevada Resort Association files challenges to the teachers and then Las Vegas Sands files its own aren’t they on the same team? And if they are not and if no one is authorized to make a deal with the teachers what happens May 20 if the union manages to acquire the requisite signatures?

The industry is afraid to even talk about it. When my producers asked for a gaming representative for this week’s “Face to Face,” the public relations folks suggested Bill Lerner, an industry analyst with Deutsche Bank whose pronouncements dovetail with the industry’s apocalyptic predictions. He is just an echo of what I have heard and actually argued for years about a gaming tax increase:

“It’s certainly easy to sell as a solution,” Lerner said. “I would suspect that a better solution is a broad-based business tax.”

No kidding. But as Chamber of Commerce members sit with their feet up in their new Town Square digs, gamers are pacing Strip boardrooms, wondering how it came to this.

Here’s how: “When we began looking at this idea, and we looked at different revenue sources that we could consider in an initiative, we certainly went to the public and asked which revenue stream they would be willing to support, and overwhelmingly, it was gaming,” Nevada State Education boss Lynn Warne said on the program.

No economic analysis. Just simple populism.

And all of this comes when the state’s needs have never been greater and the solution, for most people, seems simple. That solution lies on Las Vegas Boulevard South.

Anyone feeling anointer’s remorse?