Don't gamble on this initiative

Cowboys and Indians no longer wield Winchesters or bows and arrows.

Today’s combatants are armed with clipboards.

The cowboys, proponents of a thinly veiled attempt to cut into the juicy tribal gaming pie, are pushing a statewide initiative to legalize “historic racing.” Backed by big horse-racing bucks, the initiative won’t bring the ghosts of Secretariat and Man o’War to the Post Falls Greyhound Park. It will, however, open the door for machines that look and act suspiciously like the slot machines that are legal on tribal lands in Idaho. These new machines would apparently feature horse races that already have been run — but so quickly you can’t recognize the beasts or identify the “historic” race.

What’s interesting is that the uphill battle to attract enough valid signatures to put the initiative on the ballot in November is being made even more difficult by a counter-initiative, backed by the Coeur d’Alene Tribe. This group follows the cowboys’ petition-gatherers and basically refutes what the cowboys are telling would-be signers. The cowboys say the Indians are intimidating and harassing their petition-gatherers. The Indians say it ain’t so, and if it were, why then haven’t the police been called?

To review:

The cowboys are gathering signatures so all Idahoans can vote on an initiative that would give the purveyors of horse and dog racing a tried and true method of making money: Video-type slot machines.

And the Indians are fighting against what they call a misinformation campaign being used to eventually compete with their primary source of revenue: Video-type slot machines.

What’s really happened, quite simply, is that the horse- and dog-racing industry faked out the Idaho Legislature in 2013 and succeeded in getting their “historic racing” slot machines installed. When officials saw that what the industry had promised was not at all what they delivered, the authorization was repealed.

And here we are again. If you can’t get the Legislature to do something, why, you bypass them and try to get your issue on the ballot. In this case, an estimated 56,000 valid signatures are going to be needed just to ask Idahoans to vote on the horse-racing folks’ slot machines.

If the horse-racing folks are successful, you might ask, what’s to stop any other business interest from getting into the video gambling game? Gaming works in Idaho because it’s limited to the tribes who wish to offer it.

Bottom line is, this is another attempted end-around sprint by the horse racing folks for their benefit in Post Falls and Boise. Don’t buy it. If somebody pushes a clipboard in front of your face, treat it like a loaded weapon.