Response To NCH's Campaign Contribution Concerns

This letter to the Valley Journal in response to NCH's concern about gaming tribes controlling our legislators with campaign contributions was published in the paper but thrown to the back pages.. which is fine.. at least they printed it.. but I will post it here also in case anyone missed it.

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Dear Editor,

The list of the members of the California State Assembly Committee on Governmental Organization provided by Ms. Crawford-Hall in her “On the Ranch” column contained errors.

Curren D. Price is the current chair… not Albert Torrico and Laura Richardson is no longer even on the committee.

Ms. Crawford-Hall writes that she thought we “might be interested in some facts that were recently exposed regarding contributions to our legislators from casino tribes.”

Exposed? Like this information had been hidden from us and somehow got leaked out? Such drama! This information is public knowledge and can be found at numerous websites and publications.

Ms. Crawford-Hall then lists the members and then a dollar amount supposedly of how much casino tribes have donated to these members. Are these dollar amounts for this year? Last year? The last four years? She didn’t’ say. So I started looking into it myself.

Let’s take just one on the list…the current chair of the committee, Curren D. Price. He must be a pretty strong influence on this committee as chair. According to the source provided by Ms. Crawford-Hall, http://www.followthemoney.org, from 1/22/07 to 5/16/08 he received a total of $361,377 from a wide range of industries and businesses. The website breaks down the contributions into specific industries and indeed they list Gambling and Casinos as the top contributor to Price’s campaign over the time period stated above and lists $32,000 as the total. I guess it’s logical to immediately think that it must be the Indian casinos. Opening up the Gambling and Casino category and looking at the specific sources revealed 17 separate donations by 11 distinct sources.

Not one of them was from a California Tribe with a casino.

The sources were all card rooms, horse race tracks with the exception of Station Casinos which owns eight major gaming and entertainment complexes and five smaller casinos in Nevada. They do manage the Thunder Valley Casino in Placer County which is owned by the United Auburn Indian Community. Station Casinos contributed a total of $3600 or 1% of the total $361,377.

Another category listed was tribal governments. Not to be confused with Indian Casinos. Although it is obvious that the wealth generated by Indian casinos has allowed tribes to garner much more political clout, it has also allowed them to diversify and invest outside the gambling industry in areas such as real estate, business ventures and equities.

In the Tribal Government category for Price there four tribes listed with a combined total of $11,600 over the time frame stated above. This amounts to only 3.2% total $361,377.

3.2% isn’t much, and I fail to see what Ms. Crawford-Hall means by “what has happened to our representation”. She infers that Tribes with casinos are controlling our legislators. Seems we ought to be more concerned with the race track and card room owners who have contributed almost 6% more to Price than the tribes have if there is concern over how legislators vote in relation to political campaign contributions.

The big hitters are still the traditional sectors… the general trade and public sector unions along with lawyers and lobbyists, insurance companies and health professionals.

They all contribute much more than the tribes individually and combined.

The question I have is why Ms. Crawford-Hall is singling out the tribes? State law allows them to contribute and it is a matter of public record.

Does she have something against the tribes?

Time and space do not permit a complete rundown on the other committee member’s sources of campaign contributions, and I trust you will investigate for yourselves instead of believing what you read. Seems there is a lot of bad info being presented and published as fact these days in the Valley Journal.

One of the people on the list who Ms. Crawford–Hall wants us to believe the Tribes have in their back pocket is Albert Torrico, D-Fremont) … looking back at when the last round of amended compacts were passing through the legislature we find this quote from Torrico. “We think it is appropriate to let the tribes know what our concerns are and why there is not support for those compacts in the Assembly Democratic caucus”. He also said during this time that the tribes “Bully tactics aren’t going to work.”

Torrico, from 1/8/07 to 2/26/08, received a little more than Price from tribal governments but still only about 4.4% of the total contributions with, again, the General Trade and Public Sector Unions along with the Insurance companies leading the pack.

Torrico has stated that most of his campaign contributions go to the California Democratic Party, not his personal re-election campaign, because he wants more Democrats elected.

Torrico also has said that he favors public financing of elections.

So much for tribal buying power and again it begs the question of why Ms. Crawford-Hall has singled out the Indians.