The committee, of course, had the dough to hire as many
signature gatherers as were needed to fill up those petition forms. This was no movement driven by volunteers with
a few hours for a cause every other Saturday. It was a campaign with a capital
"C," as run by well compensated professionals from the persuasion industry.
Not having witnessed them in action, I don’t know if the
signature gatherers told their prospects, the good people of Revere, that the election
would cost the city, and hence its taxpayers, in the vicinity of $50,000. I kind of doubt it.
So, tomorrow, we shall see in Revere an election where
voters are to be asked just one question. In
essence that question is:
Do you want the company that secures a possible state license
for a second slots parlor in Massachusetts to be the one that wants to build it
on a site of at least four acres and including lands fronting on both Revere
Beach Parkway/Winthrop Parkway and Pratt Court?
The folks bankrolling the Revere Jobs and Education
Committee happen to have under agreement a property that fits that description
exactly, the old Lee Trailer Park, near the Suffolk Downs racetrack.
Revere election officials have written the following summary
of the ballot question:
“A YES VOTE requires that any future slot parlor license
awarded in the City of Revere must be located on a site that is at least four
acres in size and fronts Revere Beach Parkway/Winthrop Parkway and Pratt
Court. No slot parlor license is currently
available from the state, but the measure would be possible if there is a
change in state law or if a license from an existing operation is returned to
the state.
“A NO VOTE subjects any possible future location of a slot
parlor in Revere to the City’s zoning ordinance, rather than requiring that the
location be on a site that fronts Revere Beach Parkway/Winthrop Parkway and
Pratt Court.”
If the Revere Jobs and Education Committee wins tomorrow’s
referendum, the people it is working with will be able to circumvent the local
zoning process in the event that: (a) voters statewide approve Question 1 on
the Nov. 8 ballot, which would allow the Massachusetts Gaming Commission to
issue one additional slots parlor license, and (b) those people apply for and
are granted that additional license.
[A victory for a slots parlor
in the Revere election tomorrow and a victory for Question 1 on Nov. 8 will not
guarantee that there will be a second Massachusetts slots parlor, nor that that second
parlor will be in Revere. We're still in the warm-up phase here.]
The main reason the Revere Jobs and Education Committee
engineered the Oct. 18 special election was to give a boost to Question 1 on
Nov. 8, the idea being that, if Revere voters support its particular plan for a
slots parlor near Suffolk Downs, voters across Massachusetts will be more
disposed to voting Yes on 1 because they will reason that, if the people in the
community where the slots parlor is most likely to go want it there, who am I
to stand in their way?
The mayor of Revere, Brian Arrigo, and a host of other local
elected officials, are dead set against the project to replace the trailer park
with a large hotel containing a slots parlor. They fought hard against the petition drive
to put the issue before local voters.
“The fly-by-night ‘proposal’ to build a slot parlor on
Revere Beach Parkway would not be beneficial to the city, and in fact could
undermine the progress Revere has made toward reinventing its image,” Arrigo
has said.
Arrigo has netted this out right. Revere is well positioned
to grow economically and does not need a slots parlor in order to, as he describes it, “build a
sustainable local economy; strengthen its tight-knit neighborhoods; and provide
top-notch, efficient city services.”
This doesn’t mean Arrigo et al. will be able to stop the Revere Jobs
and Education Committee in tomorrow’s special election. There’s a real good chance, I'd say, that Revere voters will
approve the question, meaning an out-of-town political operation -- as many have done before them -- will have skillfully
exploited the state’s initiative petition process, a mechanism added to the
Massachusetts constitution in 1918 to give citizens a direct route to enact new
laws.
It was a marriage made in heaven when that political
operation met a local electorate made comfortable with the idea of casino
gambling by the multi-year (unsuccessful) effort to bring a casino to Suffolk
Downs. Ironically, the ownership of Suffolk Downs has come out strongly against a slots parlor at the old Lee Trailer Park. 
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