Part 1 - Look Who's Cashing In At Indian Casinos - Hint: It's not the people who are supposed to benefit

Part 2 - Playing the Political Slots - How Indian casino interests have learned the art of buying influence in Washington

Short Articles
Amid Scandal, Texas Tribe Asks, Where's Our Money?
George Bush vs. the Tigua

Facts

While some legislators and lobbyists are milking the Indian casino boom for tens of millions of dollars, others - including George W. Bush when he was Texas Governor - are finding that closing a casino can also be politically profitable.

Before the Tigua Indians opened the Speaking Rock Casino & Entertainment Center on their 100-acre reservation near El Paso, Texas, most tribe members lived in crumbling, one-room adobe shacks.  Unemployment exceeded 50%; so did the school dropout rate.  The only growth industry was crime.  But the casino changed all that.  In 2000, seven years after it opened, profits topped $50 million.  With its gaming income, the Tigua, also known as the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo tribe, built homes for their members and set up a health care system and a state of the art education center.  Tribe members found work at the casino and received annual stipends.

But the Tigua faced two influential enemies: conservative Baptist voters and a Governor with presidential ambitions.  As a result of an anti-Indian-gaming crusade initiated several years ago by then Governor Bush, the casino was shut down earlier this year.  "Good, hardworking people got rewarded with pink slips," says Albert Alvidrez, the tribal governor.

It wasn't the Tigua's first defeat at the hands of the government.  In the 1950s, after Washington withdrew tribal recognition, Texas became the Tigua's guardian.  But in the 1980s, when the state attorney general ruled that the reservation should be treated the same as "an Elks lodge" and the Tigua slipped deeper into poverty, the tribe approached Capitol Hill again, hoping to qualify for federal aid.  Congress made the Tigua an offer they couldn't refuse: it agreed to restore tribal status as long as the Tigua didn't engage in reservation gambling, then in its infancy.  Anti-gaming forces in Texas say the prohibition still holds.  The Tigua argue that the 1988 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, which allowed casinos on reservations, supersedes the earlier agreement.

By 1998, pressure against the Tigua had escalated into a crusade.  Newly elected Texas attorney general John Cornyn, a Republican ally of the Governor's, sued the tribe for violating the state's gaming laws.  Cornyn pursued the case with such fervor that bumper stickers labeled him "Last of the Indian Fighters."  Governor Bush himself launched the campaign to shut down Speaking Rock, saying "There ought not to be casino gambling in the state of Texas, any shape or form of it."  Of course, the state profits from a lottery, the country's fourth largest, with $2.8 billion in sales.  Bingo halls are everywhere.  Dog tracks and horse races also offer outlets for gamblers.

Critics of Bush's and Cornyn's anti-gaming efforts note that at the time, tribes with casinos were pouring most of their money into Democratic war chests.  During the 1998 state election campaign, the Tigua contributed $46,000 to Jim Mattox, Cornyn's Democratic rival for attorney general, and $89,000 to Gary Mauro, Bush's Democratic opponent for Governor.  And Bush was lining up support for his presidential run from one of the largest voting blocks in Texas: the powerful Southern Baptist constituency, a steadfast opponent of gambling.

After a  series of decision and appeals, the courts ordered Speaking Rock closed.  The shutdown is bad news for the Tigua and their neighbors - 600 casino employees lost their jobs - but it has been an indirect windfall for Republicans.  With slot machines no longer available in El Paso, area gamblers now head to the nearest one-armed bandits, at a racetrack and casino just across the border in Sunland Park, N.M.  The chief beneficiary?  Track and casino owner Stanley E. Fulton, a longtime las Vegas gambler who in 1998 donated $100,000 to the Republican party.  In 2001, Fulton became one of the largest individual contributors to the G.O.P., kicking in $800,000, including three gifts of $250,000.

As for Cornyn, fresh from his victory in the Great Indian Casino War, he began campaigning for a seat in the U.S. Senate, which he won handily this fall.