State Seeking Answers on Boycott at Del Mar

The California Horse Racing Board will subpoena Bobby Frankel, former president of the powerful Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Assn. to testify at a hearing next week about his role in the one-day boycott that canceled a Saturday race card in August at the Del Mar Race Track.

Leonard Foote, secretary of the state racing board, said Thursday in Sacramento that an inquiry into the causes of cancellation of racing, which cost the track operators about $250,000 in lost revenues, centers on Frankel, who has since resigned as HBPA president. Foote indicated that the racing board’s staff inquiry produced “substantial evidence” that Frankel had violated state racing board rules and regulations as well as the bylaws of the HBPA.

Foote said that Frankel will be served a subpoena to appear Wednesday at a racing board hearing into the incident in Arcadia.

Foote said that Frankel will be asked under oath whether he was acting as an individual or as an officer of HBPA when he told trainers at the Del Mar meet to withhold entries from the Aug. 24 entry card. He also was found in violation of HBPA bylaws when he barred horse owners from the HBPA session at which the decision was made, Foote said.

Frankel, contacted Thursday at his home in Pacific Palisades, said he would not be in the state next week to answer the summons by the racing board.

“I’ll be in New York at that time,” Frankel, a trainer, said. “I have three horses running there.”

He denied that he had violated any state or association rules in advising trainers to withhold their Del Mar entries at the August meeting to protest a threatened U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service raid to round up illegal aliens working at the Del Mar track. The raid, held early on Aug. 23, netted 123 aliens but Harold Ezell, regional commissioner of the INS, said that hundreds of other workers had left the track because they had been warned of the coming INS sweep.

Frankel said Thursday that he had not received notice of the racing board hearing or a subpoena requiring his appearance. He said that the meeting he called before the August race entry boycott was not an official HBPA meeting.

“It was a meeting of trainers,” he said. “I just called a meeting of trainers and told them that I was not going to enter my horses on the Saturday card and told them to do as they wished.”

Foote said that the staff investigation indicated that Frankel, as president, had influenced other trainers to join the one-day boycott and had excluded owners from the closed-door session at which the action was taken.

Foote said that if Frankel was acting as an HBPA official when he allegedly advocated withholding entries at the Del Mar Race Track, the organization could lose its status as the recognized agency for owners and trainers. If Frankel were found to be acting for the association, Foote said, the state board could order a vote of the licensed thoroughbred horse owners and trainers. If 51% of the HBPA members did not favor continued representation by the HBPA, “we would go looking for another group,” Foote said.

The racing board is expected to review the staff report Wednesday and decide whether there should be a full investigation of the boycott, Foote said. He added that the investigation “could lead to a full-blown trial” on the boycott.