Activists Aim to Kill Card Room Plan

George Hardie, millionaire businessman and casino owner, seemed to have it all going his way when he arrived in National City earlier this year. Buoyed by support from the mayor and city council, the hard-charging Hardie began making plans for what he hoped would be the biggest card room in the county.

But then local activists Ron Morrison and Elias Rodriguez stepped into the picture and launched a poorly financed but extremely effective citizens campaign that put some serious dents in Hardie’s plans.

Hardie, a man groomed by success, ran into an unexpected roadblock in National City last month when he asked the city council to approve an election to legalize gambling in the South Bay community. He is a managing partner and part owner of the Bicycle Club, the world’s biggest card room, in Bell Gardens, near Los Angeles, and mayor of Cathedral City.

“We intend to be good neighbors and good businessmen. We want to help this community,” Hardie said. “. . . I’m disappointed to see the close-minded pettiness and meanness that I see in some (opponents). There’s been a lot of misrepresentations and misstatements about what we want to do in National City.”

Despite Hardie’s predictions that a card room and a $35-million high-rise hotel that he wants to build would generate about $1.2 million annually for the city, Morrison and Rodriguez have organized strong opposition to the card room. In two emotional and packed council meetings, only one local resident spoke in favor of the card room.

“I mean this as a compliment to Mr. Hardie: He’s a very slick individual. Probably any business that he goes into will succeed,” Morrison said. “I just don’t want his business in my town. The hotel he wants to build is fine. But the casino isn’t.”

Morrison and Rodriguez are the point men in a grass-roots campaign against Hardie and the National City council, which they say was seduced by a rich man waving wads of money under their noses. However, their opposition to the casino is not about money, but prompted by fears of the damage a gambling hall might do in their city, a tough blue-collar community with the highest crime rate in the county.

“We voted 10 years ago to clean up this town, and through redevelopment got rid of the adult bookstores, prostitutes and problem bars,” Morrison said. “We’re just beginning to feel good about our town, and now the mayor and council want to bring in a casino. You can’t tell us that gambling won’t bring us more crime.

“We might not be a first-class city, but we’re not second-class citizens who can be bought by someone with a big checkbook,” Morrison added.

Hardie and a group of investors are in escrow on the property, but he said he would pull out of the deal entirely if the gaming room is shot down by voters or the City Council. The proposed card room would be in the hotel.

Rodriguez, a longtime activist in the Latino community who works at a local auto body shop, said that Hardie’s casino plans have galvanized the community as never before. He and Morrison, who works at a lumberyard, call their group “We’re Your Neighbors.”

Working with virtually no money, dozens of group members have canvassed their neighborhoods and made phone calls to organize opposition to Hardie. The flier they circulated was typewritten and photocopied.

“This is the most diversified coalition ever seen in this city,” Rodriguez said. “If this doesn’t tell him that the community doesn’t want the casino, then he probably isn’t listening.”

Hardie is listening and is not happy about what he hears. Last month, Hardie’s attorney wrote a letter to his opponents, threatening to sue them over their tactics. According to the letter, opponents have defamed and libeled Hardie by exposing him to “hatred, contempt, ridicule (and) obloquy.”

At issue is a Hardie proposal before the city council to call a special election in February that would give residents an opportunity to overturn the city ordinance banning card rooms. The council has twice postponed a vote to sanction the election, and the next vote is scheduled on Jan. 9.

Until the Nov. 7 council meeting, it appeared that Hardie would have no problem getting the election. He had offered to pay all the city’s expenses for the special election and received a favorable response when he said the casino and hotel would bring $1.2 million annually in revenue and create about 800 jobs.

In a Sept. 19 letter sent to a local pastor who opposes the card room, Mayor George Waters suggested that the February election was all but an accomplished fact.

” . . . You are aware this will be put on the ballot . . . Sometime in February this issue will be put on the ballot and the people will vote ‘YES’ or ‘NO’ whether they want to play regular cards in the City of National City,” Waters wrote.

The letter, which was distributed at a council meeting, infuriated dozens of card room opponents, who accused Waters and council members of sanctioning the election before holding a public hearing. The intensity of the opposition caught Waters by surprise and forced the council to delay its election vote on Oct. 17, when the issue was publicly debated for the first time.

Although the council and police department have been aware for several months of Hardie’s involvement in the proposed casino, council members voted on Nov. 7 for a second delay, until January, ostensibly at the request of Police Chief Stan Knee. Knee said he asked for the delay in order to do a background check on Hardie because he had received “suspicious information” about him.

“I’m licensed through the attorney general of California,” Hardie said of the background check. “I’ve been checked out from Maine to Spain . . . I’m a successful guy and I’m not going to jeopardize my success.”

But as opposition continued to mount, councilmen Ralph Inzunza and Fred Pruitt pulled their support of the casino. Residents had been pressuring the council to kill the casino by voting down the election.

Inzunza noted that Hardie spent $200,000 in an unsuccessful September election to sanction a casino in Cathedral City. He predicted that Hardie would spend twice that amount to win in National City.

“As time went by, I began to realize that there cannot be a fair election in National City. Our citizens couldn’t match his money,” Inzunza said.

He said that the council had been dazzled by Hardie’s promises of new wealth for the city.

“It’s the money,” Inzunza said. “It boils down to that. He’s offering us millions and we’re selling ourselves.”

Pruitt echoed the opposition’s argument that it is unfair for Hardie to demand a special election. During the two council meetings where the issue was debated, several speakers said voters’ signatures are required to put a measure on the ballot. They repeatedly accused the council of giving Hardie preferential treatment.

“I think it’s unfair for anyone to come to the council and request that an item be put on the ballot,” Pruitt said.

Inzunza and Pruitt voted to kill the special election at the November meeting but were overruled by the remaining three council members, who voted to postpone final action.

Opposition is nothing new to Hardie, a man who is not shy about using his wealth and his bevy of attorneys to go after foes. He also has been criticized for associating with shady characters.

Although he has never been convicted of wrongdoing, in 1987 federal prosecutors in Miami claimed that Hardie’s Bicycle Club was financed with laundered drug money. Hardie was not charged in the case. But according to a federal indictment, the late Samuel Gilbert, a Los Angeles contractor, his son, Michael, and four other men were involved in a scheme to build the club with illicit funds.

Michael Gilbert is a limited partner in the club. A brother, Robert Gilbert, was the club’s director of operations but was not named in the indictment. He is no longer employed by the club.

According to Bell Gardens City Manager Claude Booker, Michael Gilbert will go to trial in January, and the city attorney and finance director are expected to testify. If Gilbert is convicted, federal officials will try to get the club to forfeit the drug money, Booker said.

Earlier this year, Hardie raised another controversy when he asked the club’s 1,850 employees to contribute up to $2,500 each to a political action committee he had formed to change California’s century-old gambling laws. Some employees complained that the contributions amounted to extortion.

In October, Cathedral City voters overwhelmingly defeated two measures sponsored by Hardie and his supporters to build a card room in a $25-million resort hotel planned for the desert community.

After that defeat, Hardie filed a complaint with the state Fair Political Practices Commission alleging that the citizens committee formed to defeat the measures violated campaign disclosure laws. In a related matter, Hardie filed a defamation lawsuit against a Cathedral City councilwoman who opposed the casino.

Earlier this month, Marilyn Huff, an attorney with the prestigious San Diego firm of Gray, Cary, Ames & Frye, sent a warning letter on behalf of Hardie to the We’re Your Neighbors committee in National City. Robert Ames, a partner in the firm, is listed as general counsel for Hardie’s management team in the hotel and casino project.

In the letter sent to opponents, Hardie’s attorney threatened to sue the group for libel and defamation. According to the letter, the committee defamed Hardie in a flier that accused him of trying “to buy that election.”

The letter warned the group to “cease and desist” from defaming Hardie. However, the letter was sent to the wrong address and Morrison and Rodriguez claim they have not seen it.

“It’s all part of the intimidation process. He’s dealing with working people worried about a mortgage and their families. So, it’s easy to intimidate people,” Morrison said.

Harvey Englander, an Orange County political consultant accused of wrongdoing in Hardie’s complaint to the fair practices commission, said the letter to the National City committee is typical of Hardie, whom he called “an extremely litigious person.”

“He prefers to bully and intimidate people rather than reason,” Englander said.

Hardie, not one to remain silent in the face of opposition, called his National City detractors “vicious” and Morrison “an irresponsible person.” He added that he had his attorney write the letter to the committee “to make sure they adhere to the laws and rules and not subvert them to their own whim and will.”

“Unfortunately, these people have no facts. Facts don’t really enter into their comments,” Hardie said. “They make derogatory statements about me, personally. They are circulating a flier filled with innuendo, trying to taint the whole project. They’ve been put on notice that all of us have to follow the laws and rules,” Hardie said.

He complained that the flier accused him of being motivated by greed and of setting out to buy the election.

“It’s just vicious. These people are putting out so much garbage so people in the city won’t know what the project is all about,” Hardie said. “They never mentioned the hotel or benefits of the project. They want people to think that it will just be a gambling den.”

Hardie also suggested that some of the clergy who have spoken out against the card room are hypocritical.

“Some of these people are supposed to have a religious orientation,” he said. “They believe that anything they do is OK. They say that it’s OK to do what is necessary to achieve their ends because they’re doing it in the name of God.”

According to Hardie, a poll he commissioned in August showed that 55% of National City residents favor the election. He claimed that his group has collected 2,700 signatures from people who want the measure put on the ballot and called his opponents “a vocal minority.”

Morrison said that he has heard the same claims, but pointed out that nobody has seen Hardie’s petition or poll results.

“If we’re the vocal minority, where’s the silent majority, and why are they hiding?” Morrison said. “His hotel and restaurant are just sugarcoating for the casino. Even if this background check leaves him squeaky clean, cleaner than Shirley Temple, it won’t change the issue. We don’t want his casino in National City.”