A century after Indian wars roiled the West, another battle is raging here over a ballot measure that would expand the state's $1.4 billion Indian gambling industry. It pits California's gaming tribes against an unlikely coalition of Nevada casinos, unions, church groups and other businesses in what may become the most expensive fight in California political history.
A visit to the San Manuel Indian Bingo and Casino on a patch of tribal land 60 miles east of Los Angeles makes the stakes clear. This 24-hour no-frills casino is an economic miracle for the tiny San Manuel tribe, which once scratched out an income raising apricots and lived in shacks and trailers on a dusty 648-acre reservation. Now, 40 landscaped houses dot the hillsides behind the casino's walls, and security officers on bicycles patrol newly paved roads.But the San Manuel Indians have a problem: They and about 40 other tribes began installing slot machines over the past decade without first reaching compacts with the state, as required by federal law. So Gov. Pete Wilson and federal prosecutors consider their casinos illegal and have moved to shut them down.
In response, the gaming tribes are sponsoring a hotly contested ballot measure in the Nov. 3 election that would allow broad expansion of casino-style gaming on Indian lands statewide. In a potent illustration of the power of gambling money in politics, it seems likely to set a record for spending on a ballot initiative.
Already, the two sides have raised at least $60 million and spent about $53 million, mostly for a barrage of competing television commercials. About $43 million has been raised by tribes, $22 million of it from the San Manuel tribe alone, while opponents, led by the casino operators at Hilton Hotels Corp. and Mirage Resorts Inc., who fear untaxed Indian competition, have raised $15.5 million and spent $1 million more.
Polls have shown the gambling measure, Proposition 5, winning a majority, although not an overwhelming one, among voters, many of whom are sympathetic to decades of Indian privation.