The well-financed effort by an international gambling developer to build a casino in southern Maine has submitted more signatures in hopes of putting the proposal on next year’s ballot.
The unorthodox campaign, financed exclusively by the sister of gambling impresario Shawn Scott, failed to get the proposal before voters this year despite spending over $2.6 million. The campaign then poured another $1 million into gathering signatures for next year’s bid.
The campaign calling itself Horseracing Jobs Fairness submitted over 65,000 signatures to the secretary of state late last week. It needs just over 61,000 valid signatures to get on next year’s ballot, and it already has 35,000 signatures from its failed attempt to get on this year.
This year’s bid was denied after election officials rejected over 60 percent of the signatures the campaign submitted in February, citing widespread irregularities with the petitions.
The failure to gain certification followed widespread criticism of the campaign from lawmakers, state officials and people who complained about aggressive tactics by paid signature gatherers, and because the proposal is written in such a way that it would only benefit one developer: Shawn Scott.
“Since the beginning of this referendum process, it’s been wrought with fraud,” says Democratic Rep. Louis Luchini, a Democrat from Ellsworth.
Luchini is co-chairman of the Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee, the panel that could review the proposal if newly submitted signatures are certified by the secretary of state. He says the campaign’s tactics raise a lot of questions, and believes that it’s a bad deal for Mainers.
Luchini says the problems begin with the campaign’s name, Horseracing Jobs Fairness.
“It doesn’t even require that the casino have a racetrack,” he says, despite purporting to benefit horse racing.
As written, the referendum would direct casino revenues to the horse racing industry, which has struggled mightily despite receiving over $100 million in subsidies from slot machine revenue. But Luchini and others are also worried about Scott, the Las Vegas man who brought gambling to Maine in 2003, but who has since largely withdrawn from public view.
Scott won voter approval for Maine’s first gambling facility in Bangor 16 years ago. He eventually sold his stake to another firm for the casino operating as Hollywood Casino, netting a reported $51 million in the process. Around the same time Scott was denied gambling licenses in other states after authorities raised questions about his background and dealings with business associates.
Similar concerns were raised by the Maine Harness Racing Commission in 2004.
Since then Scott’s name has occasionally surfaced in reports about his other gambling facilities, including one in southeast Asia seized by the government of Laos last year.
“The one entity that could possibly get a casino has had trouble getting licenses in other states and has left a trail of litigation around the globe,” Luchini says.
So far, Scott’s involvement with the Maine effort has been through his sister, Lisa Scott of Miami. She has given over $4 million to effort so far. Neither she nor her brother responded to requests to comment.
Cheryl Timberlake, an Augusta lobbyist working as the campaign’s treasurer, did not respond to a request for comment.
Scott’s interests in the Maine campaign are clear: The referendum is written so that only he could develop a casino in southern Maine. But Scott’s involvement in a multimillion campaign to build a slot parlor at the Suffolk Downs racetrack in Revere, Massachusetts, was a mystery almost until Election Day.
ThT campaign originally said Scott was not involved with the proposal, but documents obtained by the Boston Globe showed otherwise, and that an offshore investment firm run by Scott and a business partner were financing the campaign.
“We go through several layers of examination for certification,” says Secretary of State Matt Dunlap.
Dunlap says the new signatures submitted by the campaign will be vetted by state election officials and local town clerks. That includes matching the signature of voters on the petitions with their voter registration card and making sure people didn’t sign more than one petition.
The same process led election officials to invalidate a majority of the signatures submitted by the Horseracing Jobs Fairness campaign in February.
The first signature effort was largely undertaken by a Maine firm run by Stavros Mendros, a longtime political activist frequently hired to collect signatures for ballot campaigns. According to campaign finance reports, the casino campaign has chosen a new firm to run its signature collection, J.E.F. Associates in West Springfield, Massachusetts.
According to Massachusetts campaign finance reports, J.E.F. is the same firm hired by the Suffolk Downs campaign that was rejected by 60 percent of voters in November.
