The New Politics of Indian Gaming
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The New Politics of Indian Gaming

The Rise of Reservation Interest Groups

Kenneth N. Hansen, Tracy A. Skopek

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eBook - ePub

The New Politics of Indian Gaming

The Rise of Reservation Interest Groups

Kenneth N. Hansen, Tracy A. Skopek

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About This Book

The advent of gaming on Indian reservations has created a new kind of tribal politics over the past three decades. Now armed with often substantial financial resources, Indigenous peoples have adjusted their political strategies from a focus on the judicial system and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) to one that directly lobbies state and federal governments and non-Indigenous voters. These tactics allow tribes to play an influential role in shaping state and national policies that affect their particular interests. Using case studies of major Indian gaming states, the contributing authors analyze the interplay of tribal governance, state politics, and federalism, and illustrate the emergence of reservation governments as political power brokers.

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CHAPTER 1

Tribal Political Expenditures in California and Washington DC

FREDERICK J. BOEHMKE AND RICHARD WITMER
California has been an intense battleground between Indian nations seeking to exercise their sovereign right to operate gaming establishments and state and federal government forces often intent on hindering their ability to do so. With over one hundred federally recognized Indian nations located within its borders—almost one-third of all such nations in the contiguous forty-eight states—California’s experience has been critical in shaping the national debate over Indian gaming. Further, the ability of such a large and diverse set of tribes to work together on a number of important issues has been critical in strengthening tribal sovereignty.
It was in California that conflict between Indian tribes operating bingo establishments and state regulators trying to stop them precipitated the legal proceedings that ultimately led to the passage of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act in 1988. However, passage of IGRA did not bring an end to disputes between tribes and the state. Compact negotiations over the next decade were marked by sharp disagreements between the governor and a majority of tribes. This conflict led to another important event. Tired of failing to secure acceptable agreements with state leaders, tribes turned directly to the voters by proposing a series of ballot measures that set records for campaign spending at the time and were passed by overwhelming majorities. Despite fierce opposition from Las Vegas casino interests, broad support was established among voters for Indian gaming.
With the dramatic expansion of gaming in California—over sixty tribes have signed compacts with the state, and annual gaming revenues in 2007 were $7.8 billion—California has continued its tradition of being a bellwether state, with tribes using their new resources to become major players in state politics.1 In this chapter, we study this phenomenon, focusing in particular on how tribes have adopted interest group strategies as a means of incorporating their views into the political process and supporting politicians and groups that help them maintain their sovereign rights (Witmer and Boehmke 2007). We do this by gathering information about tribal contributions to campaign committees and candidates for state and federal offices and about tribal lobbying in Sacramento and Washington DC. Our analysis shows that tribes employ diverse strategies when they spend their money on political activity and that they do so in pursuit of a broad array of issues beyond gaming itself.
INDIAN GAMING IN CALIFORNIA
The rise of Indian gaming began even before the passage of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act in 1988, spurred in no small part by the Supreme Court’s decision in a case involving the Cabazon Band of Mission Indians in Riverside, California. Shortly after passage of IGRA in 1988, a small number of Indian tribes in the state agreed to compacts providing limited gaming, including off-track betting, on their reservations. Over the next decade, however, tribes were frustrated by Governor Pete Wilson’s unwillingness to negotiate. Unhappy with the terms of compacts—often referred to as the Pala model compacts, after the Pala Band of Mission Indians, who, along with ten other tribes, signed one in April 1998 (Alexander 2002, 54–58)—a coalition of tribes sought recourse through other venues.
Ultimately, these tribes decided that their best chance at gaming compacts that they deemed acceptable was to avoid the governor entirely and go directly to California voters by proposing an initiative. Their proposal appeared on the November 1998 ballot as Proposition 5. Strong opposition came from commercial gaming interests in Nevada, making Proposition 5 one of the costliest initiative campaigns in history, with over $100 million in campaign expenditures by both sides (Allswang 2000; Ellis 2002). After this intense campaign, voters demonstrated their support for tribal gaming by passing it with 62.4 percent of the vote. Unfortunately for tribes, this did not prove to be a decisive victory.
Because the California constitution banned forms of gambling other than lotteries, card rooms, and pari-mutuel wagering, the compacts authorized by Proposition 5 were determined to be unconstitutional.2 In order to offer casino-style gaming under the terms of IGRA, tribes would have to secure the appropriate revisions to the California constitution.
Fortunately for the tribes, Pete Wilson had been replaced in the governor’s office by Democrat Gray Davis, who appeared to be more amenable to working with tribes. Following the passage of Proposition 5, Davis sought to appropriately amend the constitution and offer compacts similar to those set forth under Proposition 5. This process resulted in Proposition 1A, which was placed on the 2000 ballot by the legislature and offered voters the opportunity to amend the constitution to allow tribes to operate gaming facilities legally. Proposition 1A passed with 64.5 percent of the vote and relatively minor campaign expenditures.3
Gaming issues did not fade away after this victory; in fact, they emerged as a strong theme during the 2003 special election to recall Governor Davis. Schwarzenegger was highly critical of Davis and other replacement candidates for being in the pocket of special interests, including Native American casino interests (Marinucci 2003). He pledged not to accept any money from gaming interests and suggested that he might require that tribes pay a higher share (up to 25 percent) of their revenues to the state in exchange for expanded gaming rights. Not surprisingly, tribal gaming interests spent large sums on this election in opposition to the recall of Davis and also gave large sums to Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante, Schwarzenegger’s chief Democratic rival should the recall succeed.
After Schwarzenegger took office, one of his primary objectives was to improve the state’s poor financial condition. This may have made him more willing to negotiate new compacts with gaming tribes in exchange for increased payments to the state. Compacts were approved with five of the largest gaming tribes in the middle of 2004, but were challenged by two November ballot measures. Proposition 68 was sponsored by the racetrack industry, which wanted a share of the gaming pie, and would have required that tribes sign compacts requiring them to pay 25 percent of their revenues to the state; should they fail to do so, the racetracks would be allowed to operate casinos themselves. A coalition of tribes countered by sponsoring Proposition 70, which would have required the state to approve compacts that would limit tribal payments to the state’s corporate tax rate and exempt tribes from most other state and local taxes and fees. These compacts would have allowed unlimited slot machines and would not have expired for ninety-nine years. Despite fairly high campaign expenditures, both measures were resoundingly defeated by voters: Proposition 68 was supported by only 16 percent of voters and Proposition 70 by only 24 percent.
Having briefly examined the development of gaming in California and the means by which gaming tribes were able to accumulate financial resources sufficient to engage in political activities, we turn to one of the consequences of campaign and lobbying expenditures by tribal gaming interests.
AGGREGATE POLITICAL EXPENDITURES IN CALIFORNIA AND WASHINGTON DC
In this section we study patterns of political expenditures by California gaming tribes both in California and at the federal level. This allows us to determine how much money gaming tribes have donated to political campaigns or lobbying activities in total, as well as to assess the degree to which they have focused their expenditures on statewide or federal races. In the following sections, we focus on the recipients of tribal contributions—whether candidates for state offices, party committees, other organizations, or ballot measures—and the issues on which tribes lobby in both California and Washington DC.
In order to study political expenditures, we gathered data on both California and federal contributions and lobbying expenditures by Indian nations for the five-year period covering 2000–2004. This period was chosen for two reasons. First, data availability: data on California contributions have been gathered electronically only since 2000.4 Further, while a few California tribes had gaming prior to 2000 under the Pala compacts, the vast majority of gaming compacts in California resulted from the passage of Proposition 5 in 1998. Thus, restricting our analysis to this time period should capture the majority of political expenditures by tribes, with the obvious exception of contributions related to Proposition 5 in 1998. Federal lobbying expenditures and contributions for the same time period are available from the Center for Responsive Politics online database. At the federal level, we have information on both hard money given to candidates and soft money given to party committees. Note that federal soft money contributions were effectively banned by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002; thus there are no 2004 data for soft money contributions.
In order to facilitate comparisons at the different levels of government, we split the California contributions into a few additional categories. First, we separated out contributions to parties. This gives us a category that should be roughly comparable to federal soft money contributions, which were unlimited, unregulated donations from interest groups or individuals directly to political parties (ostensibly for the purposes of party-building exercises, though they were often used by parties to fund issue advertisements). Second, we separated out contributions to initiative campaigns, since there is no comparable category at the federal level and because tribes have spent heavily in this area in California in recent years. Finally, we also separated out expenditures on media or consulting, since we were not sure whether they were related to lobbying, candidate campaigns, initiative campaigns, or other purposes.
In order to enhance comparability, we examine total contributions by California gaming tribes for each year or electoral cycle, since federal contributions are available only for two-year electoral cycles, and convert both to 2002 dollars using the consumer price index for urban areas. A few interesting results emerge. First, tribes are spending a large amount on political activity: almost $130 million in California alone, and almost $15 million at the federal level. Second, they spend that money in a variety of ways in their attempts to have their views represented in the political process.
In California, the vast majority of tribal political expenditures go to initiative campaigns—about $80 million over five years. This is not surprising given the presence of a number of Indian gaming initiatives on the ballot over this period: Propositions 1A and 29 in 2000 and Propositions 68 and 70 in 2004. As noted earlier, these ballot measures would have dramatic consequences for the status of Indian gaming in California; tribes were therefore prepared to spend vast sums to promote their sovereign rights and to defend against competition from and expansion of the commercial gaming industry. In fact, a little over one-half of all gaming tribes’ expenditures in this period was devoted to initiatives in the year 2004.
Tribal governments still donated fairly large amounts of money to candidates’ campaigns, despite the fact that these contributions pale in comparison to those that went to initiatives. With the exception of 2001, in which there was not a statewide election, each year tribes contributed over $5 million dollars in hard money. The special election in 2003 to recall Governor Davis attracted substantial tribal contributions, about $13.5 million, which is not surprising given the role of the governor in negotiating compacts and the fact that the candidates on the ballot took divergent positions on Indian gaming. Schwarzenegger, for example, criticized Governor Davis heavily for contributions received from Indian nations.
About a million dollars per year went to political parties, and almost $750,000 went to political advertising and campaigns. The majority of expenditures in the latter category were in 2003, and were therefore likely related to the recall election. Finally, tribes spent a little over a million per year on lobbying state government. Lobbying expenditures also showed a steady, gradual increase each year.
With the exception of lobbying expenditures, American Indian political expenditures at the state level were much larger than at the federal level. Lobbying expenditures directed at national political committees and candidates averaged about $2.5 million over this period and also showed a steady increase, though there was a slight drop-off in 2004. Given the historical importance of the federal government in overseeing U.S.-Indian relations, it is not surprising that tribes lobby extensively at the federal level. This also fits with the findings of scholars who study American Indian politics who suggest that tribal leaders and other American Indian advocates have sought influence in Washington DC since the beginning of the republic, yet these efforts were hampered by a lack of financial resources (Cornell 1988; Gross 1989; Nagel 1982). Thus as gaming has reduced the financial impediment, many tribes have become better able to lobby the government for redress of their grievances (Witmer and Boehmke 2007).
Expenditures in the federal arena are also heavily skewed toward lobbying, unlike those within the state. In the three years for which we have data, lobbying totals $5.3 million, whereas hard and soft money contributions combined total just over $2.2 million. The latter are roughly evenly split between hard and soft contributions. Perhaps because soft money was ending after 2002, or perhaps because tribes perceived that targeted contributions to specific candidates reaped greater benefits, the relative proportion of the two changed dramatically from 2000 to 2002, with hard money increasing from 28 percent to 56 percent of contributions. Further, while federal soft money contributions in 2000 are 150 percent of contributions to California parties that year, the totals from 2001 and 2002 show that they fell to 43 percent, or less than half the total at the state level.
A comparison of expenditures in California and in Washington DC at the tribal level shows a great deal of diversity in where tribes allocated their political resources from 2000 to 2002. Of the twenty-nine tribes that have positive expenditures, there are five that spend only in Washington DC and ten that spend only in California, meaning that half of all gaming tribes in California that make political expenditures choose to do so at only one level of government. Of the fourteen that contribute at both levels, the amounts that they spend are fairly proportional at the federal and state levels, with about $2.80 spent in California for every $1 spent in Washington DC and a correlation of 0.73. The maximum spent in California was $5.9 million by the Viejas (Baron Long) Group of Capitan Grande Band of Mission Indians, and the tribe that spent the most in Washington DC was the Agua Caliente at $1.5 million. Other tribes with large total expenditures include the Morongo Band of Cahuilla Mission Indians, the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Mission Indians, Rumsey Indian Rancheria of Wintun Indians, the San Manuel Band of Serrano Mission Indians, and the Pala Band of Luiseño Mission Indians.
RECIPIENTS OF CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS IN CALIFORNIA
In this section we break down our California contributions data to study the candidates and offices to which tribes contribute. To do this, we relied on information from each electoral contest and coded missing data by hand using records from the recipient of tribal contributions. This produced a total of twenty-six different recipients, including one category for contributions whose recipients we could not determine. The nineteen tribes that made hard money contributions—of which only nine gave in all five years—made over 4,100 contributions to almost 1,700 unique recipients, with nearly one-third of these contributions coming from one tribe, the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians.
Over the period 2000–2004, a full 88 percent of expenditures went to only six categories of recipients: campaign committees (21 percent), gubernatorial candidates (19 percent), tribal PACS and political committees (17 percent), candidates for the California Assembly (13 percent), candidates for the lieutenant governor’s office (9 percent), and candidates for the California Senate (8 percent). Fifteen categories, many of them decidedly local in scope, received less than 1 percent of total contributions from gaming tribes. Examples of the categories include judges, mayors, sheriffs, assessors, and district attorneys. Importantly, this reflec...

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