Another Roll : Gambling Advocate Launches Ballot Drive for Casinos

Robert W. Wilson is at it again, three decades after he began campaigning to expand legalized gambling in California.

Operating from a Studio City storefront, the 65-year-old great-grandfather has launched another statewide drive for a ballot initiative that would authorize full-scale casinos in the Mojave Desert city of Adelanto.

The colorful Wilson, a onetime cement contractor turned artist, has been pushing his People’s Experimental Gaming Act since 1974, when he first envisioned the small San Bernardino County community as the next Las Vegas. What is different now, he says, is that he finally has adequate funding to collect the 660,000 signatures needed to get his constitutional amendment on the November ballot.

“I’ve hired every major petition company in the state,” Wilson said. “The campaign for the signatures will run from $1.5 (million) to $2 million and the campaign itself will run close to $5 million. . . . I’m not worried about the money.”

And, he added last week: “I don’t give up.”

Indeed, this is the same Robert W. Wilson who in 1964 shook up California with an initiative proposal that seemed unlikely--a state lottery. No enemy of the profit motive, he specified in the initiative that the lottery would be run by his own American Sweepstakes Corp., which would keep 13% of all revenues.

“Sure, we want to make a buck,” he said, predicting that his company would become “bigger than Standard Oil.”

With then-Gov. Edmund G. (Pat) Brown leading the opposition, the initiative was defeated by voters 2 to 1. State officials were so unnerved by the proposal that they backed another measure, which passed, to forbid naming any private firm in a constitutional amendment.

Twenty years later, California would approve a state-run lottery. But Wilson was not about to wait.

In 1965, he launched his own “worldwide lottery” from Palmyra Island in the South Pacific. “We thought that we would get a charter into the United Nations and form our own government,” he said.

The venture ended when sheriff’s vice officers discovered lottery tickets being sold in Los Angeles. Wilson wound up in Superior Court, fined $1,000 and sentenced to three years probation for conspiracy to violate state lottery laws.

In the next decade, he set his sights on Adelanto, a sleepy desert outpost that owed its existence to neighboring George Air Force Base. His initiative called for hotel-casinos there and off-track betting throughout California.

Wilson did not get enough signatures to make the ballot that time, though a portion of his vision became reality 14 years later when California approved off-track wagering.

In 1982, in a bid to fund the Adelanto initiative, Wilson attempted a gambling venture more modest than his world lottery--a bingo hall. But Los Angeles police said his political group did not qualify as a nonprofit charity entitled to run such games.

“They kept closing me,” Wilson said. “They said: ‘Bob, we’re going to have to raid you again.’ ”

Officials in Adelanto, which already has a bingo hall and 25-table poker casino, say Wilson approached them last summer and announced that he was ready for another try. As they have been from the start, they are behind his plan to turn the city of 8,500 into a gambling mecca.

“It’s a nice clean, smokeless industry,” Mayor Ed Dondelinger said. “I can’t see anything negative. I guess you could say whores and crooks, but we haven’t seen that with our little casino.”

Wilson says financing is coming from private sources “having to do with the city of Adelanto,” although he would not name them yet. An initiative campaign has until 30 days after its signature drive ends to file disclosure forms with the state.

Experts on such campaigns predict that he should be able to get more than 1 million signatures by his April 17 deadline to ensure a spot on the November ballot.

“Certainly there’s enough time,” said Kelly Kimball, president of Tarzana-based Kimball Petition Management, who was instrumental in getting the 1984 California lottery initiative on the ballot.

Kimball confirmed that his firm--which charges at least 80 cents per signature--is one of those hired by Wilson.

Once he makes the ballot, Wilson expects fierce opposition from religious groups and Nevada gambling interests. “It will destroy Las Vegas,” he said of the Adelanto plan.

The wording of the initiative cleared the attorney general’s office Jan. 9 and the campaign headquarters--”Peoples Gaming Initiative State Hdq.”--opened soon thereafter. The windows of the storefront, which previously housed a psychic and a florist, advertise “Now Hiring” to attract people to gather signatures.

Decorating the inside is Wilson’s art. A Hollywood Hills resident, he collects hundreds of four-leaf clovers, paints them, then pastes them on canvasses to form colorful merry-go-round horses. He is hoping the clovers bring him luck this time around.

“I was 20 years early for a lot of things. . . . I’m probably not going to be a rich man,” he said. “But I’m going to try.”