Jeff Gural, owner of the Meadowlands Racetrack, hasn’t given up hope that New Jersey voters will approve building new casinos in the state outside of Atlantic City, but admits that polls show the referendum is likely to fail.
Those polls prompted Gural’s group OURTurn NJ to shut down advertising in support of the referendum. Though the referendum doesn’t name a site for the new casinos, Gural has proposed a casino at the Meadowlands to be built in partnership with Hard Rock International.
“I want it to win,” Gural told NorthJersey.com. “I just won’t be spending money on TV commercials.
Gural backed OURTurnNJ’s campaign with the former Reebok chief executive Paul Fireman who has proposed a major casino project in Jersey City.
The group announced it was pulling its advertising after the release of a Rutgers Eagleton poll that showed 50 percent of potential voters were against the casino expansion, which was supported by the group’s own polling. The Rutgers poll found that opposition to the plan was 58 percent when read the exact wording of the referendum.
Opponents have sharply criticized the referendum for its ambiguity as it does not name sites for the new casinos, the tax rates they will be charged and how tax revenue will be spent.
Gural told NorthJersey.com he has been bewildered by the strong opposition to the plan that has come from the southern part of the state. South Jersey legislators feel that new casino construction would further destabilize a struggling Atlantic City casino market.
However, proponents of the expansion had said as much as $150 million a year in revenue from the new casinos would be earmarked for redeveloping Atlantic City as a more well-rounded tourist resort.
“The worst thing that ever happened to Atlantic City would be the defeat of this referendum,” Gural said. “People would look back someday and say, ‘How did they ever make such a big mistake?’”
Opposing ads against the referendum, continuously called into question whether political promises on how new casino revenue would be spent would be honored by Trenton.
“I never envisioned that people would be so angry at their politicians, in Trenton and anyplace else, that we would lose on the basis of someone campaigning not to trust politicians,” Gural said. “It’s a brilliant strategy.
Trenton’s Bad Bet has funded most of the ant-referendum advertising. It is a non-profit group that describes itself as a coalition of “community leaders, unions, businesses, and residents.
Gural’s comments also come amid reports that he had made strides to decrease opposition from officials in Oceanport NJ, home of Monmouth Park horseracing track. Though the new casino plan was to provide aid to the state’s horseracing industry—which is also struggling—again the referendum does not spell out how much aide the industry will get. Estimates were about 2 percent of the revenue which track officials said is too little to help the industry.
According to the state’s Asbury Park Press, Gural is close to making a revenue sharing deal with the track to provide money for operations and purses at Monmouth Park from his profits if Trenton does not set aside significant aid.
“I’d have to try to reduce expenses and restructure some things next year, do something to hang on,” Gural said.
That deal with Monmouth Park might still go through as the issue could resurface again in two years—the time required before attempting another referendum—if the referendum is defeated in November, the paper said.
“We’re working on the format of an agreement that he would sign,” Dennis Drazin, adviser to Monmouth Park’s operators told the paper. “And while it’s not as much money as I wanted, it was something.’’
Gural also told NJ Advance Media that he will work to revive the plan if the referendum fails.
“Horseracing in New Jersey has been destroyed,” Gural said. “I thought if I built a beautiful facility and offered to give the taxpayers $500 million a year, people would get on the bandwagon. Not this year. Eventually, there will be a casino at the Meadowlands. There has to be.”
Meanwhile, several other backers of the expansion plan have begun to sound like they are already planning to regroup after the referendum is defeated.
Assemblyman Ralph Caputo, a major proponent of the plan, told NorthJersey.com that polling numbers reflect the disparity in spending between opposing interests—including companies with casinos in New York and Pennsylvania—and supporters. Caputo said that casino interest in Pennsylvania and New York have funded the opposition to the referendum due to a flaw in New Jersey’s plan.
“The requirement that only current Atlantic City casino operators may attain licenses for the proposed North Jersey casinos inhibited free enterprise and interest from potential investors across the nation, and suppressed the potential financial support from those investors to successfully fund a ‘Vote Yes’ campaign.” Caputo said.
He pointed to Las Vegas casino owner Steve Wynn, who expressed interest in a North Jersey casino earlier this year, but backed off when state Senate President Stephen Sweeney included the provision that Atlantic City casino operators would have first shot at the new casino licenses—though that advantage would expire if no companies moved to propose projects.
Opponents of the plan, however, welcomed the suspension of OURTurnNJ’s advertising.
“Locating casinos outside of Atlantic City would further harm an already fragile economy in South Jersey, so their abandonment of this effort is good news for the region,” southern New Jersey State Senator Jeff Van Drew said in a press statement. “While this is a blow to the North Jersey casino effort, our work is not done. We now have to make sure the proposal is defeated at the ballot box.”
