In 2018, Arkansas voters approved a ballot measure authorizing an amendment to the state constitution allowing casinos in Hot Springs, West Memphis, Jefferson County and Pope County. Casinos are up and running in the first three, but three years later there’s still no casino in Pope County as numerous legal battles have caused the project to stall.
Most recently, the anti-casino group Fair Play for Arkansas announced they will seek an amendment to the 2018 amendment. The group plans to collect enough signatures to have the measure put on the 2022 ballot. It would be retroactive to 2018, meaning the state constitution would once again exclude a Pope County casino.
Local businessman Jim Knight is one of the leaders of Fair Play. He tried to prevent the first casino approval in 2018. Back then, Knight’s group, Citizens for Local Choice, argued the ballot entry was confusing. A judge dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that Local Choice hadn’t made its case strongly enough. Local Choice became Fair Play, whose effort to stop a Pope County casino failed last year.
Knight said the group wants the state’s constitution to be reworded to specify only three casinos were allowed, without the one in Pope County, even though voters approved the original measure in 2018. He added the amendment would not affect existing casinos elsewhere in the state. The group will use unpaid canvassers to avoid noncompliance with a new law intended to make ballot initiatives harder to qualify with restrictions on paid canvassers. Fair Play worked with a network of churches to gather signatures statewide in 2020 and is expected to do that again.
The Arkansas Racing Commission awarded the Pope County license to Gulfside Casino Partnership of Mississippi. However, another applicant, the Cherokee Nation, has challenged the process in court; the case has yet to be settled. The situation has had far-reaching impact, including the defeat of Quorum Court members who supported the Cherokee casino in return for $40 million in community development spending.
