FL Supreme Court to mull LVS' proposed casino amendment

COURT BATTLE

Florida: Seminoles-linked group escalates lawsuit against Sands over proposed gaming expansion


2022-01-11
www.yogonet.com/international/news/2022/01/11/60894-florida-seminoleslinked-group-escalates-lawsuit-against-sands-over-proposed-gaming-expansion

The court battle sparked by a proposed constitutional amendment seeking to open the door to casinos in North Florida has escalated once again, as accusations between parties involved in the litigation flew on Monday.

Florida Voters in Charge, a Las Vegas Sands-backed committee behind the casino expansion, is racing to meet a February 1 deadline. In order to make it onto the November 2022 ballot, the committee must submit 891,589 signatures by said date.

The proposed amendment would allow existing card rooms to become casinos if they are located 130 miles from tribe-owned facilities. According to the state Division of Elections website, the committee had submitted 458,608 signatures as of Monday.

On Monday, a committee linked to the Seminole Tribe, which opposes the proposed amendment, accused backers of the measure of engaging “in a widespread, election-law conspiracy” in the race to gather signatures, reports CBS 12.

The new allegations build upon an ongoing legal battle between both parties: Florida Voters in Charge accuses the Seminoles of illegally attempting to “sabotage” the petition drive by, among other means, paying people to stop gathering signatures.

Now, the Standing Up for Florida committee, reported as funded by the tribe, asked on Monday a Leon County circuit judge to decide that the signatures gathered so far have been “illegally obtained,” thus meaning they should be scrapped.

According to the committee, Florida Voters in Charge and its contractors “corrupted” the petition process throughout Florida “by blatantly violating” civil and criminal laws, in an effort to secure “illicit access” to the state’s ballots.

A series of documents filed by West Palm Beach attorney William Shepherd allege that petition gatherers are being paid by the signature: this would imply a violation of Florida law. Defendants had previously denounced heavily redacted contracts were provided during the trial to hide an “illegal compensation scheme” for how circulators are paid.

Moreover, court filings further maintain that a contractor illegally disposed of petitions that were either incomplete or erroneous, South Florida Sun Sentinel reports, in an effort to avoid being financially penalized by the Florida Voters in Charge committee.

Las Vegas Sands has been reported by Florida media as having contributed nearly $50 million to the constitutional amendment effort. If approved, it would open the door to Vegas-style casinos along the Interstate 10 corridor in North Florida, and is reportedly geared toward a facility in the Jacksonville area.

But the Seminoles, which are currently the sole operators of Vegas-style gaming in the state, have launched a counterattack against the initiative: the tribe has been reported as having invested at least $20 million into the Standing Up for Florida committee, as well as having spent millions on advertising against the ballot measure.

Documents now filed on behalf of Standing Up for Florida ask to block Leon County Supervisor of Elections Mark Earley and Secretary of State Laurel Lee “from giving legal effect” to all “illegally-obtained” initiative petitions in the amendment proposal.

The committee has provided testimony from former employees or petition-gathering contractors who accused businesses and individuals working on the ballot initiative of illegally paying employees by the signature, as well as shredding incomplete petitions and forging signatures on petitions.

As reported by Yogonet on Monday, the Florida Supreme Court is set to mull the proposed constitutional amendment that would let pari-mutuel operators in North Florida add casino games to their operations, as Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody asked the court on Friday to consider the proposal.

The Supreme Court’s review is for now only limited to considering whether the initiative meets formal requirements, such as having a single subject and not being misleading to voters in the state.

Indian tribes go to great lengths to sustain Monopolies when it comes to casino style gaming. The same thing happened in Washington State many years ago when card rooms here unsuccessfully tried to gain authority to expand their gaming options. The tribes here flexed their monopoly muscle and shot it down. Later on, when smoking was banned in casinos, the tribes thumbed their noses at that too so now they've got a monopoly on gamblers who smoke as well.

BALLOT INTIATIVE

Florida election officials report "hundreds" of fraudulent petitions in Sands-backed gaming expansion proposal

www.yogonet.com/international/news/2022/01/20/61023-florida-election-officials-report--34hundreds-34-of-fraudulent-petitions-in-sandsbacked-gaming-expansion-proposal

Florida Secretary of State Laurel Lee first took note of the petition drive in December.

Florida election supervisors are citing fraudulent signatures on a Las Vegas Sands-backed petition drive to expand gaming in the state. Local media reports Florida could be in the midst of one of the largest cases of election-related fraud in recent history, with thousands of fraudulent petition forms having been supplied to supervisors.

Sands-backed committee Florida Voters in Charge is seeking to allow existing card rooms to become casinos if they are located 130 miles from tribal facilities. The amendment would open the door to casinos in North Florida, along the Interstate 10 corridor, and is geared toward a facility in the Jacksonville area.

In order to put the initiative on the November ballot, the committee is racing against time to submit 891,589 valid petition signatures by February 1. But now it has been revealed that thousands of the signatures provided thus far could be fraudulent: many include the names of dead people or forged signatures of real voters, informs Miami Herald.

In addition to fraudulent petition forms, parties opposing the gaming expansion have also accused organizers of setting up an illegal compensation scheme, paying petition gatherers by the signature instead of by the hour, which implies a violation of Florida law.

According to the cited news source, the petition drive first caught the attention of Secretary of State Laurel Lee last year. In a December 3 letter, her office referred claims of fraudulent petitions by six county elections supervisors to Attorney General Ashley Moody.

Florida Voters in Charge has denied any effort to illegally push for the ballot initiative. Jim McKee, attorney for the committee, called the idea of purposely submitting fraudulent petitions “ridiculous,” as it would not help the effort “in any way.”

He further noted state law requires to submit every petition received, while not being allowed to screen them. McKee has encouraged law enforcement “to investigate any petitions of concern,” which all identify the individual who collected it.

Lee’s letter from last month mentioned “hundreds” of suspected fraudulent petitions, submitted by more than a dozen gatherers across the state from Oct. 14 to Dec. 1. The letter noted a provision of state law that would allow the attorney general to stop the suspect fraud without having to wait for law enforcement to build a criminal case, which Moody ultimately did not take.

Moody’s office said that once the Florida Department of Law Enforcement reviews the case, the Office of Statewide Prosecutor would review its findings, reports Tampa Bay Times. Organizers for Las Vegas Sands said they were not aware of any investigation by the attorney general’s office. A spokesperson for Gov. DeSantis’ office said that the matter had been referred to Moody’s office and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

The new development follows an ongoing court battle between organizers for Las Vegas Sands and the Seminole Tribe, which opposes the gambling expansion, over the ballot initiative. Sands had accused the tribe of attempting to “sabotage” the petition drive by, among other means, paying people to stop gathering signatures.

But parties linked to the Seminoles, at the same time, accused Sands in court of having “corrupted” the petition process throughout Florida “by blatantly violating” civil and criminal laws, in an effort to secure “illicit access” to the state’s ballots.

The news on suspected fraudulent petition forms further complicates the Sands-back petition drive. Wilcox, the Marion County elections supervisor, said he found his forged signature on a form and that gatherers have been dropping bundles of forms by the thousands at his office, but sometimes more than 80% “can’t be verified.”

As each petition includes the name of the circulator, along with an attestation the information is true under penalty of perjury, some petition circulators could face serious jail time, potentially up to 40 years. The secretary of state’s memo included suspected complaint forms from Duval, Gulf, Pinellas, Marion, Brevard and Bradford counties.

Federal government will appeal Florida Gaming Compact ruling

floridapolitics.com/archives/488214-federal-government-will-appeal-florida-gaming-compact-ruling/

The federal court decision had struck down Gaming Compact, online sports betting.
U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland has notified a federal court that she and the Department of Interior intend to appeal the November court decision that struck down internet sports betting and Florida’s 2021 Gaming Compact with the Seminole Tribe of Florida.

Haaland filed her notice to appeal the decision Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The actual appeal is set to be filed by Saturday.

The federal government’s argument would have to convince the Appeals Court that the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act gives the Interior Department authority to approve Florida’s Gaming Compact even if the Compact allows bets to be placed outside tribal lands.

The notice itself does not reveal what arguments Haaland and the government might be preparing to make.

On Nov. 22, the U.S. District Court issued a summary judgment invalidating her federal approval. Without that approval, the Compact could not be enacted.


That decision shut down the Seminole Tribe’s sports betting app, which had only been activated three weeks earlier. The decision also left in limbo other provisions in the 2021 Gaming Compact, which would have allowed the addition of other casino games and future expansion of gambling by the Seminole Tribe. Sports betting, however, was the first big expansion in line.

The Seminole Tribe of Florida already has filed its own appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals District of Columbia Circuit.

The federal appeal, however, may have stronger standing. One of the things the U.S. District Court did in November was rule that the Seminole Tribe’s attempt to intervene in that case was moot.

Until the notice was actually filed Thursday, Haaland and the federal government were quiet about whether they would bother to appeal.

The Compact was challenged and fell because of a federal lawsuit filed by the owners of two South Florida card rooms: West Flagler Associates, which does business as Magic City Casino, and Bonita-Fort Myers Corp., which does business as Bonita Springs Poker Room.


They argued the approval was unlawful because it allowed the Tribe to operate gaming outside its own reservation, which they said is not permitted under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. The groups raised qualms about Floridians placing sports bets on smartphones or computers through the Seminole Tribe’s Hard Rock Sportsbook app.

West Flagler Associates and Bonita-Fort Myers Corp. also argued the approval violates other federal laws by unlawfully permitting internet and bank wire transmission and payments relating to sports betting in Florida, where sports betting is otherwise illegal, and by granting the Seminole Tribe what the organizations asserted was a statewide monopoly over internet sports gambling.

Why doesn’t LVS waste their time and money on something more productive like mobile gaming??

Jan 27, 2022

Florida elections supervisors rejecting large amounts of gambling petitionsBoxes inside the office of the Lake County Supervisor of Elections contain more than 17,000 signed petitions.
Supervisor Alan Hays says, so far, they've rejected nearly 60% of them.

"Every single petition that is presented to us, check the name on it, the address, the date of birth, and we check the date that petition was signed, and we check the signature and see if it matches what we have on file for that voter."

He says they're sending more than 3,000 of these petitions to the state attorney's office - petitions they believe are fraudulent.

For example, Hays says, "We have no record of that person even being in our database and the address are incorrect. There's just all kinds of things that appear to be false information being presented to us."

The petition is Number 21-16, a measure that would let voters expand gambling in Florida beyond just casinos run by the Seminole Tribe. The petition is backed by a group called Florida Voters in Charge, and chaired by a man named William Spicola.

Messages to both the group and Spicola weren't answered. Elections workers say every registered voter whose petition was rejected is getting this letter explaining what happened.

Marion County Supervisor of Elections Wesley Wilcox says they normally don't reject this many petitions. He says in his area, the staff even found the names of Wilcox and his wife on petitions they never signed.

"In my office, if there's one signature that everyone recognizes, it's mine," he quipped, "I sign the checks!"

The Fifth Circuit State Attorney's Office says they can't comment on pending litigation, but they are investigating similar allegations of fraudulent petitions from every county they cover.

Florida Voters in Charge has more than $50 million in funding, the vast majority coming from the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, which owns casinos in Las Vegas, Macau, and Singapore.

Continue reading: www.fox35orlando.com/news/elections-supervisors-rejecting-large-amounts-of-gambling-petitions

Blitz you have follows this closer then probably most of us. I believe you said you live in sunny Florida?
It seems like LVS is just pissing in the wind.

In your opinion is LVS just wasting time/money trying to get in Florida? Is their much of a chance getting in or is this like Texas?

Great info. Thank you.

In the above post, DKNG's comments could be misleading? Why? I place DFS bets on DNKG sometimes and every time I open the app it asks me to sign the petition. So, given all the sports betters in FL on DKNG's app and all the money spent to get signatures, it was a big fail.

Florida Sports Betting PAC Folds Proposed Referendum Effort

DraftKings, FanDuel spent about $37 million on failed ballot initiative

by Jill R. Dorson - January 28, 2022 
sportshandle.com/florida-sports-betting-committee-folds-referendum/


(Shutterstock)

Florida voters won’t have the chance to decide in November whether or not to legalize sports betting after Florida Education Champions, the political action committee running a signature-gathering effort for DraftKings and FanDuel, pulled the plug ahead of a Feb. 2 deadline for verified signatures. As of Friday morning, the campaign had 475,325 verified signatures, well below the 891,589 needed to get on the ballot.

This past November, FEC said it had collected 600,000 signatures, and in a statement released Friday, suggested it had collected 1 million. But elections supervisors across the state have been unable to keep up with the late flow of signatures from ballot proposals.

The campaign is among the costliest efforts in Florida history to attempt to get an issue onto the ballot, with DraftKings and FanDuel putting up a combined $37 million. That number is still less than the $51.6 million, put up mostly by the Las Vegas Sands Corp., to fund a second proposal that would allow a brick-and-mortar commercial casino to be built in Jacksonville.

“It’s unfortunate that the voters will not have their say on their ability to add sports betting to the state of Florida,” said Brendan Bussmann, a partner at the consulting firm Global Market Advisors, which did not work on the two Florida campaigns. “Not only is this because of challenges experienced by the committee and their effort, but also because of parties that blocked the effort that supposedly were supportive of the voters having a say.”

Signature gathering has been a battle
The signature-gathering process in Florida has been fraught with accusations of harassment and fraud in recent months. In particular, petition gatherers for Las Vegas Sands Corp., which is still hoping to get its gambling expansion proposal onto the ballot, have been accused of fraud, while petition companies hired by the Seminole Tribe have been accused of harassment and other illegal practices.

The Seminoles, who currently have a monopoly on gambling in Florida, last year negotiated a compact to give them more table games and legal digital sports betting. That compact has since been struck down by a federal court, and it’s unclear what path forward the tribe will take to try to secure the right to legal wagering.

“We are extremely encouraged by the level of support we saw from the more than one million Floridians who signed our petition and thank them for their efforts in wanting to bring safe and legal sports betting to Florida, while funding public education,” FEC spokesperson Christina Johnson said in a statement. “While pursuing our mission to add sports betting to the ballot, we ran into some serious challenges, but most of all the COVID surge decimated our operations and ability to collect in-person signatures.”

In the last several weeks, DraftKings offered $100 to every person in Florida with one of its accounts should Florida Education Champions collect enough signatures by Feb. 2. And on behalf of Barstool Sportsbook, Dave Portnoy jumped in to make a plea.


Florida Voters in Charge, the political committee funded by the Las Vegas Sands Corp., currently has 730,243 verified signatures, according to the state Department of Elections website. Elections supervisors across Florida will continue the count through early next week, but even if Florida Voters in Charge meets the verified signature threshold, it may fail to get on the ballot because of a state requirement to gather a set number of signatures per district in Florida. The campaign was less than halfway to the minimum per district in at least six of 27 districts as of Friday morning.

Campaigns got a late start
Both Florida Voters in Charge and Florida Education Champions began collecting signatures in earnest in late summer. Several political consultants said campaigns in Florida generally need a year to gather the required number of signatures.

“It was a longshot to gather that many signatures in six months, and it looks like they both have failed,” Scott Powers, a reporter at Florida Politics, told Sports Handle earlier this week. “It usually takes nearly a full year to collect the signatures and some have taken longer. They didn’t really get started in earnest until around Labor Day, I’m told. And part of that is because there were a lot of moving pieces out there with litigation and what not. From the start, people were telling me it would be really hard to do.”

According to a memo from the Florida Secretary of State, any signatures collected after April 20, 2020, are invalid after Feb. 1, 2022, which means that Florida Education Champions — or any other campaign — cannot carry the signatures forward should it choose to make another push to get on the next ballot.

Just when Florida could get legal sports betting is in flux. The Seminoles had their Hard Rock Digital platform live for 34 days in November and December before taking it down nearly a month after a U.S. District Court judge struck down the compact. Appeals in the case are pending, and the case is now in U.S. Appeals Court in the District of Columbia. A decision in that case could be up to a year away.

Johnson said that Florida Education Champions will continue to consider “all options in the months ahead to ensure that Floridians have the opportunity to bring safe and legal sports betting to the state.” And there are more immediate pathways for both commercial operators and the Seminoles. The tribe could renegotiate its compact to be more inclusive, or the state legislature could revisit legal wagering in the 2022 session.

“Efforts should be made to have an open and competitive market in the state that allow protections and a quality product to be accomplished for the people of Florida,” Bussmann said. “Because of the political nature, this will take a solid effort heading into 2024 and an effectively run signature-gathering process to allow the voters to have their say.”

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Some history on this issue...

BUZZ ON FLORIDA POLITICS

Gaming companies betting $62 million on 2022 Florida ballot

Gambling interests are pouring money in ahead of a new law that caps campaign contributions.

The Seminole Tribe of Florida owns the Guitar Hotel near Hollywood. [ MIKE STOCKER | South Florida ]
By Ana Ceballos and Mary Ellen Klas - Published Jul. 13, 2021
www.tampabay.com/news/florida-politics/2021/07/13/gaming-companies-betting-52-million-on-2022-florida-ballot/

TALLAHASSEE — Spurred by a massive gambling deal for the Seminole Tribe of Florida, three out-of-state gaming giants — Las Vegas Sands, FanDuel and DraftKings — have put $37 million into what appears to be an effort to front load multiple ballot efforts to influence the future of sports betting and casino gambling in Florida.

A fourth company, owner of Florida-based Magic City Casino, has created a political committee called People Against Regulatory Legislation Addressing You (PARLAY) in June and gave it $15 million for purposes yet to be determined.

And, the Seminole Tribe, in an effort to counter measures that could undermine its gambling deal with the state, has injected $10 million into a political committee, Voters in Control Inc., to influence issues on the 2022 ballot.

The sudden dump of nearly $62 million in political contributions from a single industry is an unprecedented amount in Florida but was the result of a new law passed by legislators and signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis this year that limited contributions for signature-gathering efforts on ballot initiatives to $3,000 per entity beginning July 1. In an attempt to avoid being constrained by the cap on contributions, the gambling interests front loaded their contributions by writing generous checks before the effective date of the law.

Now that the powerful gaming entities have political committees with millions of dollars that can be used ahead of the 2022 election, details on how they hope to operate or break into the lucrative gaming market in Florida are coming into view:

The international sports betting giants, FanDuel and DraftKings, want their own online sports betting deal to be approved by Florida voters.

The Seminole Tribe is spending money to defend the 30-year gaming compact reached with DeSantis, which is pending approval by federal regulators.
Las Vegas Sands, a behemoth in the global casino industry, is interested in breaking into the Florida market.

The owner of Miami’s Magic City Casino, West Flagler Associates, wants to be included in discussions that lead to changes in the state’s gaming industry that impact parimutuel interests.
FanDuel and DraftKings each wrote $10 million checks to Florida Education Champions, the political committee behind a 2022 ballot initiative asking voters to authorize online sports betting at all Florida parimutuels, professional sports stadiums, and anywhere else in the state using a mobile sports betting platform.

The two international sports betting giants were iced out of a 30-year, $500 million-a-year gaming compact reached by the governor and the Seminole Tribe of Florida and ratified by Florida lawmakers in May. The deal is pending approval from the U.S. Department of Interior, which governs tribal gaming. Federal regulators have 45 days after the compact was submitted to make a decision. The governor’s office said the compact was mailed to the agency on June 3, meaning a decision could come as early as this month.

But the surprise player to emerge Monday, the day campaign finance disclosure reports were due at the Florida Division of Elections, is the Las Vegas Sands Corp.

The new law they all attempted to avoid never took effect, however. On July 1, a federal judge temporarily blocked the cap on contributions for petition drives after the American Civil Liberties Union and three political committees sued to overturn the contributions cap, arguing it would suffocate the public’s ability to amend the state Constitution through the ballot-initiative process. The state is expected to appeal.

But the arrival of so much cash into Florida’s political coffers to expand gambling underscores a new reality: The state’s international tourist market has enormous allure for the global gaming industry. A 2018 law requires gambling expansion to get statewide voter approval. And the ease with which the gambling compact between the tribe and the state was approved by the conservative Florida Legislature, which until now had been gambling-averse, marks a shift in attitude in the Sunshine State.


“Every time there is an expansion of gambling in Florida, it leads to more expansion of gambling,’' said John Sowinski, director of No Casinos, which ran the Amendment 3 campaign in 2018 that made it illegal to expand gambling in Florida without statewide voter approval. “The compact has opened the floodgates to everybody getting everything now.”

But to get a measure on the ballot in time for the 2022 elections will be an enormous undertaking. Florida legislators have prohibited petition gathering companies from paying signature gatherers by the signature. There are a limited number of companies that are capable of doing the signature-gathering work. And the record turnout in the 2020 elections means that more signatures are needed by the February deadline than ever before.

Las Vegas Sands bids on Florida
Las Vegas Sands is controlled by Miriam Adelson, the wife of the company’s late CEO, Sheldon Adelson. The couple had been generous, and early, supporters of DeSantis.

In March, Las Vegas Sands sold its Las Vegas properties and announced it is looking to expand into other states. The company has long had an interest in getting into Florida’s casino market but never could persuade the Florida Legislature to expand casinos licenses, and it did not hire a lobbyist during the last legislative session.

At the end of June, Las Vegas Sands gave $17 million to a newly-formed political committee, Florida Voters in Charge, which has yet to explain its intentions, according to disclosures reported by the Florida Division of Elections on Monday. .

“We are contemplating various options with no intention to violate the recently passed compact/revenue sharing agreement,’' said Sarah Bascom, the group’s spokesperson.

“Our initial donor, the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, has long been interested in Florida and we look forward to sharing more about the Florida Voters in Charge effort in the coming weeks and months.”

Sands is thought to be interested in running a casino Florida either by partnering with or buying out an existing permit holder. In early March, Miriam Adelson flew to Tallahassee and met with DeSantis as the governor was meeting with Florida-based parimutuel owners about their role in the gaming compact, according to her private plane details obtained by the Miami Herald and interviews with people involved in the meetings.

The gaming compact signed by the Seminole Tribe and the governor left the door open to allowing voters to approve additional casinos in Florida. It stated that as long as a new casino was 100 miles from any of the tribe’s casinos and has the tribe’s consent (and in Miami-Dade and Broward counties if the new casino is not within 15 miles of the tribe’s Hard Rock Casino near Hollywood) it would not violate the gaming compact.

The most likely venues for casino expansion in South Florida are considered to be the Fontainebleau Resort in Miami Beach and the Trump Doral Resort in Doral, both communities whose local governments have passed ordinances that prohibit casinos. The Genting Group, which bought the Miami Herald site in 2011 with hopes of opening a waterfront resort-hotel casino, is believed to be interested in Trump’s resort in Doral.

Adelson has also engaged in talks with parimutuels elsewhere in Florida, including Melbourne Greyhound Track and the Best Bet Jacksonville, both of them clients of lobbyist Nick Iarossi, who in the past has also represented Las Vegas Sands.

Unlike the 2010 compact between the tribe and the state, the one negotiated by DeSantis allows an existing license to be transferred without violating the compact. In order to obtain a license to offer sports betting or casino games at those venues, Adelson would need statewide approval from voters under Amendment 3.

Iarossi said that they formed Florida Voters in Charge to pursue signatures once they decide what the gambling expansion proposal will look like.

“There’s ongoing talks but there are multiple versions of the language that can be filed,’' he said. “We haven’t filed any language yet.”

Tribe opposes sports betting on ballot
The Seminole Tribe’s spokesperson, Gary Bitner, would not comment on the Las Vegas Sands operation except to say: “Seminole Tribe and Seminole Gaming want to know more about it.”

However, he said the tribe is vigorously opposed to the constitutional amendment proposed by FanDuel and DraftKings that would legalize sports betting outside of the tribe’s agreement with the state.

“This is millions of out-of-state corporate dollars to try and manipulate the people of Florida, who are smarter than that,’' Bitner said. “They think they can buy their way into the state. Our team intends to use our Florida dollars to protect the interests of the people of Florida.”

If the initiative gets enough signatures and makes it on the 2022 ballot, and if it is approved by 60 percent of voters, it would undermine the portion of the agreement that gives the tribe the opportunity to enter into agreements with existing parimutuels to operate sports betting at their facilities by having all transactions go through the tribe’s servers.

In addition to giving the tribe the exclusive opportunity to operate the digital sports books in Florida for the next 30 years, the gaming deal also opens the door for a huge expansion of the tribe’s gaming empire, which now consists of seven casinos, including the Hard Rock Hotel & Casinos near Hollywood and Tampa.

The agreement, if approved, also would give the tribe the exclusive right to operate craps and roulette at all of its casinos and to build three more casinos on existing tribal property east of Florida’s Turnpike in Broward County.

In return for all those components, the tribe would give the state about $500 million a year in revenue-sharing payments. If the sports betting component is ruled unconstitutional by the courts or rejected by federal regulators, or if a constitutional amendment is passed authorizing sports betting outside of a tribal server, the Seminole Tribe will be allowed to reduce its annual payments to the state. Tribe gaming officials estimate the reduced amount would be about $100 million annually.

Magic City owners want a role
The constitutionality of the sports betting language in the compact is the target of a federal lawsuit filed by the owner of Magic City Casino, West Flagler Associates, which is owned by the Havenick family, one of Florida’s oldest parimutuel companies.

The Havenicks argue that the agreement authorizing sports betting outside of tribal lands in Florida is in violation of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act and the lawsuit asks the court to enjoin implementation of sports betting under the deal with the state.

In an effort to protect its interests, West Flagler Associates created its political committee, People Against Regulatory Legislation Addressing You, chaired by Isadore “Izzy” Havenick, vice president for public affairs.

“The committee was formed in order to make sure our family business and other multi-generational family businesses are not excluded from any conversations that could cannibalize us,” Havenick said. “We know there are national companies out there that see the potential of our great state, and we believe we should all work together to give the best product to the people of Florida in an inclusionary fashion.”

In an interview, Havenick did not deny the $15 million stashed in the political committee could potentially be used to draft a constitutional amendment that could relate to other parimutuel interests. His late father, Fred Havenick, helped launch a campaign that led voters to approve slot machines in Miami-Dade and Broward counties in 2004.

Record contributions
The multi-million political contributions from Las Vegas Sands, FanDuel, DraftKings and West Flagler Associates are so far the largest contributions made during Florida’s 2022 election cycle, according to campaign finance records.

Only two political contributions in the past decade have been larger than the ones made by the gaming companies. In 2014, former Gov. Rick Scott wrote a $27.5 million check to his political committee, Let’s Get to Work. And in 2018, Marsy’s Law for All Foundation spent $18 million to fund the ballot initiative that created a bill of rights for crime victims.

It takes money and time to get ballot measures approved in Florida. Although Amendment 3, voter approval of gambling expansion, was approved by 71 percent of voters in 2018, the effort took supporters five years and $46 million.

A spokesperson for Florida Education Champions, which is supported by FanDuel and DraftKings, said the companies plan to continue raising money while the law limiting contributions is challenged in court.

“The Florida Education Champions committee will continue to comply with current law,” said Christina Johnson, a spokeswoman for the group.

Clarification: This story was updated on Wednesday, July 14, to be more precise about the possible location of additional casinos for the Seminole Tribe in Broward County and the language in the compact regarding what happens if sports betting is rejected by the courts or federal government or authorized in a different fashion by a constitutional amendment.