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#084 – Adventures in the Law Part IB – Mr. D’Amato Goes to Washington
II. And We Still Lost 409-2
In the end, it didn’t make a damned bit of difference.
This is how politics really works. A couple of lawmakers behind the anti-online gaming bills already chose this as their pet cause. The reasons are myriad: honest belief that online gaming is evil, no one else was doing it and it was a way to be the leader on something, courting the right-wing/religious-fundamentalists.
There was no Big Moneyed Interest who made this their top priority. Being against any form of gambling definitely gets you points with the bible thumpers, who wield tremendous political power, though online gaming isn’t up there with prayer in school and banning abortion. Almost more important, however, there wasn’t a Big Moneyed Opponent to the law. If, for example, this law riled the National Rifle Association, it would have been a lot harder – maybe impossible – to quietly slip this kind of a bill through Congress.
So you had guys like Reps. Leach and Goodlatte and Senator Kyl (ugh, from my own state) who for whatever reason considered this an important cause. They were, at least indirectly, making a lot of influential people (the moralists) happy by taking this position and not pissing off a recognizable/influential opposition.
Senator Bill Frist, then the Senate Majority Leader (the most powerful man in the Senate when it comes to getting laws proposed and packaged, as well as getting the Republicans, then the majority party in the Senate, to vote for them) played a decisive role, apparently for a goofy reason. (A) Frist was entertaining the notion of becoming President in 2008. (B) One of the first places to demonstrate you could GET TO BE President was the Iowa caucus, a January 2008 political gathering determining who Iowa’s relatively few delegates would vote for at the Democratic and Republican conventions in Summer ’08. (It’s influential because it’s early, before even the New Hampshire primaries, which likewise are considered influential beyond their numbers because they take place in February. Shock of shocks: more states are moving up their primaries to winter and early spring.) (C) A champion of this bill in the House of Representatives was Rep. Leach, from Iowa.
Frist pretty obviously wanted to curry favor with Leach in the hopes it would help him in the January 2008 Iowa caucus. The House had passed a version of Leach and Goodlatte’s bill earlier but it was expected the Senate’s legislative session would expire on September 30 without it taking action (both Houses end their legislative sessions in advance of the November elections), thus killing the bill until the next session. Frist pulled the bill off the mat and tried to get it inserted into another piece of legislation already on the schedule for the last few days of the Senate session. This would not only give the bill a chance to become law, but give it a REALLY GOOD chance because with so much on their plates, Senators were unlikely to consider issues of internet gaming as they would if it was a stand-alone measure and the focus of debate or consideration.
We online poker players did have a few things in our favor: (A) the PPA had some presence in Washington, and brought out our most attractive representatives back in April; (B) the crux of the bill would be to place burdens on the financial services industry because they could be liable for processing gambling transactions and would have to police themselves in advance, exactly the sort of thing a trillion dollar industry hires lobbyists to prevent; and (C) The American Gaming Association, the trade/lobbying group of the casino industry, after previously being against online gaming, decided to take no position, which was positive because the casinos have a very powerful lobby and they are obviously seeing opportunities to get involved in online gaming themselves, as well as being careful not to ally themselves with the “gambling is the devil’s work” crowd.
Frist failed to get the bill attached to an armed services bill and it looked like his efforts had failed. But on the last day of the session, he succeeded (blame Senate Democrat from Nevada Harry Reid) in getting it attached to a bill increasing funding to fight terrorism and secure ports.
So how’d we come out?
I went to Howard Lederer’s house on September 30 to conclude our work on the Full Tilt book. It looked like Congress would NOT be passing any laws hurting online poker, and Full Tilt had just finished doing a great job at the last minute jumping into the Pro-Am Equalizer Tournament (after another online site had pulled out) and turning it into a great show. I thought we’d have a relaxing afternoon talking about Limit Hold ‘Em tournament strategy and basking in the glow of how great it was to be Howard Lederer at this point in time.
Instead, Howard answered the door and said, “This is turning into one of the worst days of my life.”
Long story short: after midnight, the SAFE Ports Act passed the House 409-2 and the Senate by a voice vote. Five weeks later (but far too late for our purposes), instant karma bit Leach on the ass and he was voted out of office. Frist, who presided over the fiasco of both Houses of Congress losing their twelve-year majorities, decided to forego a run at the White House in 2008 for the far more pressing business of getting the hell outta Dodge.
