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Kentucky pro-gambling candidate wins

Kentucky slots gambling at horse race tracks would join Indiana, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ontario in creating additional revenue for purse prizes vastly exceeding what Ohio tracks can offer.

"If casinos open in Kentucky, it will be a crippling blow to the Ohio horse racing industry from which it might not ever recover," says Jack Hanessian, general manager of Cincinnati track River Downs. "I don't see any way that River Downs could continue to operate unless the state worked with the industry to help Ohio tracks compete with some form of expanded gambling. Kentucky casinos would simply be the last nail in the coffin."

Beshear, a Democrat, ran his campaign against incumbent Ernie Fletcher primarily on the expanded gambling issue, which Fletcher opposed. Beshear has supported casino gambling as a state revenue generator and a critical support tool for the historic Kentucky horse racing industry, which has been hit hard by competition with tracks with expanded gambling in neighboring states.

Pundits who followed the race view Beshear's victory in part as a referendum in support of future casino gambling in Kentucky. Beshear won by a 60 percent margin. Kentucky's legislature must first approve a ballot initiative, but according to a poll by Louisville's The Courier-Journal, 78 percent of Kentuckians polled favored a public vote on a constitutional amendment to allow expanding gambling in the state. The poll also found that 48 percent of those surveyed support casinos, 42 percent opposed them and 11 percent were undecided, according to the Associated Press.

Casino gambling in Kentucky would put slots 20 miles away from River Downs at rival track Turfway Park in Florence. "Who would come to River Downs then?" Hanessian says. "Not only would our patrons want to play the slots across the Ohio River, but our race purses would become pitiful in comparison to what Kentucky tracks will be able to offer if they get expanded gambling revenue. In that scenario, it is a certainty that River Downs would have to close."

Ohio horse race tracks already compete against subsidized tracks in Indiana, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ontario that pad horse race purses with gambling revenue, plus against casinos in Detroit. This year Ohio's legislature shot down an "instant racing" bill that would have permitted machine-based parimutuel gambling on previously run races and has just outlawed "skill-based" machine games in an effort to ensure no expanded gambling in Ohio.

"Ohio is just about to become a victim of this protective moral mentality," Hanessian says. "Our leaders and the public need to understand the stakes and act before it is too late. We can continue to insist that expanded gambling is not for Ohio, but we are shooting ourselves in the foot as our residents and their dollars flee the state to gamble across the border.

"Gambling money can be put to good use here and the first place to start would be Ohio horse race tracks," Hanessian says. "Ohio can get behind the three-quarter-of-a-billion industry that supports Ohio horse racing with an expanded gambling solution, or keep casino gambling out of Ohio and lose even more money."

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