By Bob Morgan

BILOXI, Miss. — A.J. Holloway, the four-term mayor of the city of Biloxi, said he doesn’t know the politics of Alabama, but Mississippi had to do something. He’s talking about casinos.

“We were the poor state,” he said last week after one of the conferences of the Southern Gaming Summit held at the Mississippi Coast Coliseum & Convention Center.

“This has been a big boom for Mississippi.”

He cites Tunica in the Mississippi Delta as proof.

“That was the Sugar Ditch of the United States before casinos came in, and they have a new pickup truck at every house now.”

“Sugar Ditch” refers to the creek that runs through Tunica County. The term has become Dixie slang for septic runoff or open sewage.

Nearly 25 years ago Tunica was known as “America’s Ethiopia,” that based on a litany of hardcore facts: high infant mortality rate; number of births to teenage mothers; lack of modern plumbing; lowest median household income in the nation and highest percentage of people living below the poverty line; 70 percent of residents under 25 with no high school diploma.

“The casinos came and everybody in and around Tunica got a job,” said Holloway, who played on the 1960 Ole Miss national championship football team.

So, why has the “Magnolia State” embraced casinos and not the “Cotton State?”

Again, Holloway doesn’t know the politics of Alabama. Maybe Alabama has too many Baptists is the only conclusion he draws.

Whatever the reason, both Deep South states at least share this in common: This year’s presidential election will bring about changes in the gaming industry.

Jana McKeag, president of Lowry Strategies, a bipartisan Federal and State government affairs consulting service, was one of the conference speakers on May 7 at the Gaming Summit.

According to McKeag, the importance of the presidential election where gaming is concerned is that whoever wins will be appointing judges, U.S. attorneys and a new Department of the Interior secretary and Bureau of Indian Affairs personnel, people who will come into contact with gaming issues and have the potential to impact national policy on the subject.

Also, the results of the presidential contest will potentially bring about a new approach on legal and regulatory issues such as land-in-trust and off-reservation gaming where Indian groups are concerned.

McKeag, Harvard-educated and a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, described the three presidential candidates’ views on gambling this way during the conference on “Decision 2008: What’s At Stake For Gaming.”

Republican John McCain has a love/hate relationship with gaming. He is opposed to off-reservation gaming for Indian groups. He is also opposed to online gaming, but McCain is difficult to fit into a single mold where gaming is concerned.

Democrat Barak Obama is okay with gaming as long as it’s well-regulated and, in McKeag’s words, “doesn’t impact the morals of people.”

Democrat Hillary Clinton has been “surprisingly supportive of Indian gaming.” Also, Clinton is not opposed to Internet gaming but has asked if it can be regulated.

Whatever the differences between the candidates on the subject of gaming, McKeag said for both political parties “casino” is a four-letter word.

DIRTY WORD

“We need to educate legislators and their staffs about the advantages of gaming,” McKeag said, noting the public as well has a “very negative perception” where gaming and casinos are concerned.

While Mississippi casinos have brought in jobs and tourism dollars, a challenge exists to educate people about the positive aspects of gaming, she said.

During a question and answer period, one female attendee at the conference on “Decision 2008” identified herself as a professor who teaches a course on gambling at a Mississippi college. She said most of her students come into the class with a negative perception of gaming. Many of those students are out of a Southern Baptist background, she said.

Education, in her opinion, is, indeed, the key, and once those students learn more about the gaming industry they come to better recognize the positive aspects of it, she said.

Holloway, the mayor, is one of those for whom “casino” is anything but a dirty word. He wants to see more casinos come to his city in places such as West Biloxi and South Beach.

“We have a big story to tell here in Biloxi on the Gulf Coast,” he said during the “Decision 2008” conference in referring to the role of casinos on the coast.

(The extent to which casinos are now a part of coastal Mississippi life could be seen in the slick page “Casino Site for Sale” ad that was included in the materials given out at the Southern Gaming Summit. The 8.37 acres of “Casino Zoned Property” is located less than a mile east of the IP Casino Resort & Spa and Boomtown casinos in Biloxi.)

Holloway was vocal in his criticism of the Mississippi Legislature’s failure to recently pass a tax incentive program for tourism that would allow casinos to invest in non-gaming properties such as water and theme parks, speedways and cultural and historical centers.

Advocates of the bill hoped it would jump-start Mississippi’s economy during the current national economic slump. Among those that opposed the bill was the Mississippi Baptist Convention.

State Rep. Bobby Moak, who chaired the “Decision 2008” conference at the Gaming Summit, chairs the Gaming Committee in the Mississippi House of Representatives. Gov. Haley Barbour can call a special session in which the bill might yet be considered, Moak said.

(Moak is credited with the so-called “800 Foot Rule” which allows Mississippi casinos to move onshore, a move that came in Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath as a way to revitalize the battered coast.)

In response to a question concerning a smoking ban coming to Biloxi, Holloway said he would oppose such a proposal as long as he can get three council votes. Concerning Indian casinos, the mayor said Indian casinos need to stay on reservations, otherwise they create a playing field that isn’t level since Indian casinos are, in his words, “unregulated” and “untaxed.”

McKeag disagreed with that assessment. One conference attendee representing a Native American group disagreed as well.

“Wherever we’re having gaming, that’s Indian country,” he said, calling the reservation idea a “sad legacy” in this country.

“We had liberal immigration policies in our day,” the man said, a reference to the coming of the white man and what eventually happened to Indians in this country.

Of Indians casinos’ 700,000 employees today, half aren’t Indians, the man said.

SEMINOLES IN

FLORIDA

What is happening in the state of Florida with the Seminole tribe could impact Mississippi casinos as well as Alabama’s long running battle with the Poarch Band of Creek Indians in Atmore, the state’s only federalized tribe.

“The Seminoles have waited a very long time for a governor to come to the table that would talk about a compact,” McKeag said.

Late last year, Gov. Charlie Crist signed a gambling compact with the Seminoles. Under that compact the Seminoles will have rights to Class II and Class III slot machines and table games such as blackjack.

Already the Seminoles have replaced bingo-style slot machines at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood with the more traditional slot machines found in Mississippi casinos. The Seminoles have agreed to pay approximately $100 million a year to the state as part of the compact deal.

While Senate leaders in Tallahassee want to rewrite the compact, McKeag for one believes the compact will at least get to the Secretary of Interior for consideration.

What the Seminole expansion of gaming in Florida might to do Mississippi’s coastal casinos is open to speculation. The state of Mississippi has projected the Seminoles could decrease business at coastal casinos by nearly 10 percent.

Cathy Beeding, vice president and general counsel for Island View Casino Resort in Gulfport, Miss., said during the “Decision 2008” conference that Mississippi casinos need to play “offense” rather than “defense” where the Seminoles are concerned.

“I don’t think it’s going to impact us a lick,” said Danny Davila, chief financial officer for the proposed Bacaran Bay casino in Biloxi, like Beeding a conference speaker.

Davila said the price of gasoline would have a greater impact on Mississippi coastal casino revenues than would the Seminoles in Florida.

“It might pick off one or two high rollers,” he said of the extent of the Seminole gaming expansion’s impact on coastal casinos.

Calling gaming relatively “recession-proof,” Davila thinks Coast gaming will stay “relatively robust.”

Holloway agreed: “People like to come to Biloxi and the Mississippi Gulf Coast.”

CREEKS IN ALABAMA

McKeag, the Washington lobbyist, knows the Poarch Band of Creek Indians. In an interview following the conference, she said the Creeks have been trying “very, very hard” to get a compact with the State of Alabama.

Last month, Alabama Attorney General Troy King filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to block the U.S. Department of Interior from allowing the Creeks to get Class III gaming activities currently prohibited by law.

The action by the state is another chapter in a long legal story involving the Creeks, who own a number of small parcels of land in Baldwin County. At the heart of the conflict is the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA).

“The Department of the Interior’s recent actions represent a complete disregard for fundamental principles of states’ rights and an arrogant lack of respect for the people of Alabama,” said King in the April 8, 2008, press release concerning the lawsuit.

That same release sets forth a number of historic legal confrontations, beginning in the early 1990s when the U.S. Supreme Court determined that Congress did not have authority to “unilaterally” remove a state’s sovereign immunity from a lawsuit as set forth in IGRA. Thus, the Creeks were prevented from suing the State of Alabama.

Then, in 1999, the Department of Interior created new procedures for tribes to use if a state invokes immunity. In 2006, the Poarch Band asked the Department of Interior to enforce those procedures against the state, at which time King said those procedures were invalid. Last year, the state, citing a Fifth Circuit ruling striking down the new procedures, asked the Department of Interior to dismiss the Poarch Band’s petition for Class III gaming. When the state was ignored, according to the release, King filed suit to protect the state’s rights by having the 1999 procedures declared invalid.

“Governor Riley has never supported gambling in the State of Alabama and that is unlikely to change,” said Tara Hutchison, the governor’s press secretary.

“Governor Riley believes that expanded gambling would put Alabamians at greater risk for a wide range of problems such as addiction, unemployment, crime and corruption, all of which carry a cost that would ultimately be paid by taxpayers.”

In order to sustain revenue from gambling, state government would have to attract more and more people to gamble, Hutchison said.

“Governor Riley doesn’t believe this should be a function of our government. Also, we believe that a majority of Alabama citizens don’t support casino gambling or a lottery. The last time there was a vote on a lottery, the people voted against it.”

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