Flyers Backfire in Campaign Against Card Club : Gambling: Warnings against ‘Asian organized crime’ are branded as racist. The flyers were issued by groups with financial backing from a large card casino.

A drowsy campaign over legalized gambling in West Hollywood exploded to life last week, as outraged residents decried racial images contained in two campaign flyers warning that passage would bring “Asian gang members” and “Asian organized crime” to the largely white city.

City officials and activists roundly condemned the flyers, which were sprinkled with Chinese characters and repeatedly referred to links between violent, gambling-related crime and Asians. “How will West Hollywood control the Asian gang members?” asked one of flyers, which also contained the blurred photograph of a masked gunman.

The outcry against the flyers was joined even by opponents of the ballot initiative to allow betting at a longtime West Hollywood card club.

“To blame Asians for all the crime associated with gambling is racist,” said City Councilman John Heilman, who led opponents in 1990 when the measure was defeated at the polls. Heilman said he would ask the City Council to condemn the flyers and similar campaign tactics at its next meeting.

Outraged residents unable to track down the authors complained to City Hall. “I was going to vote no again, but with this thing, I’m so furious I’m going to vote yes, “ said Paul Morgan Fredrix, an actor.

The flyers were issued under the names of two newly formed groups whose financial backing comes mainly from The Bicycle Club casino in Bell Gardens, according to the groups’ campaign consultant. The massive club has actively resisted the approval of new gambling clubs.

Consultant Michael Triggs said he lamented the flyers’ tone, which he conceded was racist. He said he approved the crime theme but did not see the final version before 20,000 flyers were mailed out last weekend. He said he had fired the San Diego public relations firm that produced the mailers.

The flyers are the first real sign of any campaign over a June 8 ballot proposal to allow betting at the Cavendish West Hollywood club. The owners were routed in a similar ballot effort after spending lavishly three years ago. This time their strategy has been to run a low-key campaign and target sure-fire backers in a race that is expected to lure few voters to the polls.

The measure, called Proposition D, would allow the private bridge-and-rummy club to move to expanded quarters on La Brea Avenue and add pan, a game related to rummy. The initiative would allow up to 89 tables, less than half the number proposed last time. The new version also bars poker, a game that worried voters three years ago. The club is not an actual casino; players would rent seats and bet only against each other, not the house.

Two factors lend the initiative better odds this year: It is smaller, and the city is desperate for the cash. The casino would pay the city up to 14% of total earnings, along a sliding scale.

The measure got an unexpected boost from the flyers, which widely angered a liberal city that has few Asian-American residents but has taken strong anti-discrimination stances, especially for the many gays and lesbians who live there.

“This piece is going to make things more difficult for us,” said Steve Martin, a city rent-board member who is trying to organize local opposition to the card club initiative. “People in West Hollywood are not going to put up with this.”

Triggs conceded that the mailer had damaged his efforts to assemble an opposition campaign funded by the out-of-town casinos. He planned to dissolve one of the groups listed on the flyers--the West Hollywood Voters League--which he created as a way to gather city residents to the cause.

*

The voters league actually was funded by a casino group called the California Sports, Entertainment and Gaming Assn., a month-old political-action committee seeking to thwart new clubs, Triggs said. Association treasurer David Gould, the only person listed on the group’s state and county election filings, declined to name any members. But Triggs said the group so far is backed mainly--perhaps solely--by The Bicycle Club. The club’s general manager, George Hardie, did not return calls on the casino’s role.

Gambling measures are also on the June 8 ballot in the cities of Pico Rivera, Cypress and Stanton. A Lynwood group gathered signatures for a November initiative, and officials in Anaheim and Garden Grove are considering establishing card clubs.

The flyer campaign was designed to raise doubts about the West Hollywood club’s intentions and stir concerns over gambling-related crime, Triggs said. The flyers challenge the Cavendish club owners’ assertions that they have no plans to eventually introduce big-money games, such as super pan and pai gow, which are offered at The Bicycle Club and other local casinos. The initiative would open the doors to all games legal in California, except poker. Skeptics doubt that the club could make money without offering the high-stakes games.

Most of the uproar over the flyers focused on the crime references. One of the flyers, a large fold-out with a yellow background, presents a collage of jarring images--newspaper clippings on gambling violence and excerpts from a San Diego prosecutor’s report on card casino crime--using bold print to highlight phrases such as “Asian organized crime groups” and “high stakes Asian games.”

The 1992 report by San Diego County Dist. Atty. Edwin L. Miller Jr. urged officials to reject casinos in the county, saying existing clubs were ridden with corruption and crime, ranging from money laundering to prostitution. It points to growing influence of Chinese and Vietnamese crime rings. Some of these passages were highlighted in the flyers.

One excerpt says: “It must be expected that if a large card room casino operation is established . . . the influx of high stakes Asian games will result in a local increase of criminal activity attributed to Asian organized crime .”

But the flyers don’t indicate that the report also cites widespread casino-related crime by non-Asian groups. Nor do they note that The Bicycle Club, the campaign’s major financial backer so far, is prominently featured in the prosecutor’s report for the very kind of crime the flyers evoke. The club’s role in producing the mailers is even more curious considering that a large share of its earnings are from games popular among Asian players.

*

By Thursday, Triggs was trying to control the damage.

“Yes, it blew up,” Triggs said of the flyer campaign. “The patient is injured but not dead yet.”

Triggs said he planned to meet with local opponents in an effort to salvage what he called a “stillborn” campaign. Though the gambling measure was thrashed at the polls in 1990, it has galvanized almost no organized opposition this year. No one stepped forward to write sample-ballot statements in opposition to the card club, though the idea still has outspoken and prominent foes, including most members of the City Council. Opponents typically mention worries over crime and traffic.

The blow-up puts local gambling foes in the awkward position of trying to fight the well-financed Cavendish club without being too closely tied to the rival casinos’ group--and the now-famous flyers.

“We’re going to have to raise a lot of money locally. . . . If we’re going to be supported by these people, then we’re going to share in the taint of this piece,” Martin said. “The only up side to this is that it’s attracting attention that there’s even an election.”