Inside Asian Gaming

inside asian gaming July 2016 8 Cover Story overall than Republicans. Certainly there is no love lost between the tribes and Mr Trump, who once secretly backed a smear campaign in newspapers and radio aimed at turning public opinion against a New York tribe seeking to open a casino in the southeast of the state. Fearing that expansion in New York would hurt his struggling casinos in Atlantic City, he approved ads that depicted the tribe as violent criminals and drug dealers. Several years before this, in 1993, when tribal gaming was just beginning to find its legs, he appeared before a committee of the House of Representatives to testify against expansion in terms that might be described generously as inflammatory and were construed by many at the time as blatantly racist. Conversely, a decade later, he would invest heavily in a tribal casino near Palm Springs, California, in exchange for what turned out to be a short- lived management contract. “It’s not a party issue, we work with Democrats and Republicans,” says Victor Rocha, editor of an influential California-based Indian news site called Pechanga.net. “In this case, it’s the individual, not the party.” Perhaps the biggest concern for the Native American community, gaming and non-gaming, is the key appointments the president controls over who will head the cabinet-level Interior Department, side,” he says. “And gaming industry leaders historically have wanted the libertarian side to win out. Libertarianism stands for fewer taxes and regulations on business, which of course includes tourism. But that also relied on a degree of consistency within the Republican Party, which does not exist right now with Donald Trump. Presumably, as a businessman, he understands their concerns. But are they able to trust him? The concern is not only whether he’s a Republican, but whether he even knows himself what he is. We haven’t exactly seen a lot of policy statements.” As for Native American gaming, a US$28 billion industry in its own right, Democrats have historically been more supportive Sheldon Adelson has long been a significant Republican backer