In a 5-4 vote May 20, the Louisiana Senate Finance Committee narrowly approved an amendment to a bill that would remove the 1996 ban on casino contributions to political candidates. The amendment’s sponsor, state Senator Thomas Pressly, said an attorney for Penn Entertainment, which operates five riverboat casinos in the state, asked him to bring it up.
According to NOLA.com, Pressly said, “I believe it’s a clean-up bill that’s dealing with allowing a corporation to give contributions that are fully disclosed.”
But on May 23, Pressly then rescinded the amendment, citing the backlash that it had received.
Pressly’s amendment was attached to House Bill 906, sponsored by state Rep. Mark Wright, which would raise campaign contribution limits in Louisiana for the first time since 1988. The bill was steadily advancing through the legislature.
In response to the amendment before it was removed, former Louisiana Gaming Control Board Chairman Ronnie Jones said the ban on contributions from casinos and casino management should not be removed.
He told NOLA.com, “We don’t want to ever live through what we did with the rollout of gaming during the Edwin Edwards administration. It’s taken us years to get past that and improve our reputation among other gaming states and gaming companies.”
Jones was referring to the 1992 scandal when Edwards’ children benefited financially from the legalization of Harrah’s casino, and the Senate president handed out campaign checks from a riverboat casino operator to senators on the Senate floor.
Edwards ultimately was convicted of taking payoffs from companies seeking one of the state’s 15 riverboat licenses from a board he appointed. The Louisiana legislature passed the ban on casino contributions in 1996, soon after Edwards left office.
Contributions from video poker interests also were prohibited, but that industry won a court ruling overturning that ban. That ruling was previously referenced by Pressly, who told committee members the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision removed campaign spending limits on corporations.
Before rescinding, Pressly had said his amendment was “a correction of an unconstitutional act of a First Amendment limitation. It would simply put them in line with every other organization and entity in the state and allow them to participate in the political process by giving contributions to us.”
However, Pressly did not note a 2002 Louisiana Supreme Court ruling that upheld the constitutionality of the 1996 ban on donations by casinos, their employees and the employees’ spouses. The court ruled there’s a difference between video poker and casinos, since anyone can apply for a video poker license but the number of casino licenses allowed in the state is limited.
The court said, “Given the history of the gaming industry and its connection to public corruption and the appearance of public corruption, it is completely plausible, and not at all novel, for the Louisiana legislature to have concluded that it was necessary to distance gaming interests from the ability to contribute to candidates and political committees which support candidates.”
