Gambling split a curious distinction

loading...

SANFORD – On the morning after one of the most memorable election nights this town has seen, many of the lawn signs were still standing even though the debate over a proposed Indian casino here was all but over.

But there was a new debate to take its place.

“What was the difference?” asked a mildly irked Tanje Burby from behind the counter at the Lil’ General Store in Sanford, where voters – like their counterparts statewide – rejected the Indian casino but approved a similar initiative to put slot machines at the state’s two harness racing tracks.

“I guess I don’t get it,” she said.

With all of the state’s 649 precincts reporting, unofficial results tabulated by the Bangor Daily News showed the racino referendum passed with 53 percent of the vote. By contrast, only 33 percent of those same voters favored the Indian casino planned for Sanford.

Outside Bangor area polls Tuesday, the reasons voters gave for approving one proposal and not the other were varied, but in many cases boiled down to the idea that small gambling was better than big gambling.

“I know its weird,” conceded 44-year-old Julie Lisnet as she walked out of her polling place at the Abraham Lincoln School in Bangor. “It’s just that Question 2 helps what’s already been here for a long time. On Question 3, I’ve seen Foxwoods and I know what it does, and we don’t want that.

“I want to support the Indian tribes,” said Lisnet who, like many voters, split her votes on the two gambling questions. “But there has to be a better way.”

Still reeling but in some ways not surprised by the lopsided defeat, tribal leaders reached Wednesday expressed regret in the fervent opposition of some the state’s most powerful political figures to what was billed as a job creation plan.

These same forces – including the likes of Gov. John Baldacci and former Gov. Angus King – did little to derail the racino plan, casino backers complained.

“Nothing has changed,” Penobscot Nation Chief Barry Dana said in a statement Wednesday. “My people have lived with hollow promises for 500 years. Promises from state leaders combined with lies, scare tactics and intimidation to keep a majority of the state’s wealth, power and resources in the hands of a select few.”

On Indian Island on Tuesday, Penobscot artist Dominic Polchies, like 93 percent of the island’s residents, voted for the casino.

The message sent by its defeat, he said Wednesday, combined with passage of the non-Indian slot machine referendum, was unmistakable.

“It’s very clear that there’s racism here,” Polchies said, although adding that while he didn’t agree with every aspect of the referendum, he wanted to support his tribe with his vote.

Passamaquoddy state Rep. Fred Moore III was just as pointed in his blame for the casino’s defeat.

“People in the state of Maine do not oppose gaming, they oppose Indian gaming,” Moore said. “They don’t oppose gambling, they oppose tribal casinos, anything that the tribe is going to benefit from.” Anti-casino forces rejected charges of racism.

“This has never been about the tribes in our estimation,” said Dennis Bailey, spokesman for the political action committee CasinosNO! “This was about a bad idea.”

Bailey’s group unofficially opposed the racino, but limited its spending to defeating the casino referendum, which early polls suggested would be a close contest.

Had he known that Question 3 was destined to fall so hard at the polls, Bailey said, the group also would have registered its opposition with the state to Question 2 and spent some money to point out several serious flaws with the racino plan.

“It would have fallen like house of cards,” he predicted.

Even before the first vote was counted Tuesday evening, Bailey also predicted – albeit guardedly – the demise of Question 2, banking on stiff opposition from southern Maine.

But in the end, the harness racing initiative won in 12 Maine counties, including Cumberland and York counties, two southern counties among those most convincingly against the Indian casino plan.

Jim Melcher, a University of Maine political science professor, credited some of Question 2’s success to a virtually unchallenged campaign able to avoid references to gambling while stressing the plan’s agricultural connections.

“They used the words ‘slot’ and ‘machines’ as little as humanly possible,” he said.

Mainers could hear those two words in future legislative sessions, however, with state officials talking about creating a gaming commission in light of Tuesday’s vote on the racino question.

But, as far as the prospect of the Legislature taking up the idea of large-scale gambling any time soon, House Speaker Pat Colwell, D-Gardiner, said don’t bet on it.

“I think the will of the voters was very clear yesterday,” Colwell said Wednesday. “I can’t see us looking at this again any time in the near future.”

Reporters Nok-Noi Hauger and Diana Graettinger contributed to this article.