This was a small-turnout event that wasn’t even close to
being close.
Of the 4,549 residents of the Beach City who voted, 2,970
were against the idea of having a slots parlor on the site of an old trailer
park near Suffolk Downs, while 1,574 were for it, and 5 left the question
blank.
Even for an election in my hometown, the blanks were a quirky
product.
There was only one question, one item on the ballot, having
to do with a slots parlor. Five
individuals schlepped to the polls, signed in, got a ballot, did nothing with
it when they went behind the curtain, slipped it into the box, and walked out
the door. Ohhhh-K.
Up till now, I always thought of blanking as something you
did when there were multiple candidates and/or referendum questions on the ballot. I blank guys I’m not enamored of,
incumbents, as a way of signaling it’s time for them extend their
career horizons to the private sector.
It’s an easy message to send when you’re at the polling place on other
business. One has to be zealously
neutral to go and vote solely to show you don’t care one way or the other.
The putative Revere slots parlor was defeated by a margin of
65.29% to 34.6%, but the most interesting percentage emanating from the
election had to do with turnout. There
are 27,781 registered voters in Revere.
The 4,549 voters who participated in the special slots election
represent slightly over 16% of that total, meaning the election result can be
framed as follows:
Eighty-four out of 100 Revere voters don’t give a poop if an
unidentified group of investors builds a major gambling venue in their city or
not.
Recall that the head of the Revere Jobs and Education
Committee, Eugene McCain, who moved only recently from Thailand to Revere to
serve as point man for more gambling by slots machines in Massachusetts, has
declined, as recently as Monday in the Boston Globe, to release the names of
those investors.
Revere Mayor Brian Arrigo described McCain’s offering as a “fly-by-night
‘proposal’ ” and denounced the Revere Jobs and Education Committee as a “shoddy,
previously unheard-of enterprise.” (The
mayor actually put quote marks around proposal whenever he wrote about it.)
The hopes of McCain/Revere Jobs and Education Committee that
a victory in the Revere special election would improve the odds that voters
statewide would approve Question 1 on the Nov. 8 ballot – a question advanced
by the related Horse Racing Jobs and Education Committee –were dashed to pieces
yesterday.
A delighted Arrigo intends to keep a bright bulb burning
over those shards.
Arrigo told WGBH news last night: “What’s exciting is that
we have now taken out of their arsenal the talking point that Revere wants
this, because we don’t. It’s clear that
we don’t. And I look forward to telling
everyone from now until November 8 that the city of Revere does not want this.”
McCain/Revere Jobs and Education Committee/Unknown Investors
spent a considerable sum, a sum not yet definitively known, on the effort to force
the city, via an initiative petition, to hold a special election on its slots
parlor proposal before the upcoming state election and on the accompanying promotional campaign. In one news story last week (or thereabouts),
it was reported that they had expended around $400,000 in Revere.
In the gambling industry, which sees Massachusetts as an
especially lucrative market -- and especially so for slots machines because
Massachusetts has a larger-than-average elderly population and the elderly love
their slots -- that is not really a lot to spend on development. Steve Wynn spent upwards of $300 million
chasing the eastern Massachusetts casino license with his Everett casino plan.
That would have all been wasted if the Mass. Gaming Commission, back in September of 2014, had selected
the other bidder, Mohegan Sun at Suffolk Downs. 
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