LOCAL ELECTIONS / WEST HOLLYWOOD GAMBLING : Casino Foes Put Cards on the Table : Gaming: Opponents, fearing Proposition D might pass, form committee at last minute. Similar measure for a club was defeated easily three years ago.

It’s not a game of solitaire after all.

Just nine days before the election, the campaign to open a card casino in West Hollywood finally has two sides playing. A local committee opposed to the legalized-gambling measure has sprouted at the last minute, shaken out of slumber by the possibility that the initiative supporters might actually win on June 8 after being thrashed at the polls three years ago.

Until two weeks ago, the only sign of an opposition in the usually contentious city were two controversial campaign flyers produced by an out-of-town casino group. No one stepped forward to write sample-ballot arguments against the measure, called Proposition D, and city leaders were all but silent on the matter.

“A lot of people just thought, “This is going to be a slam dunk--this isn’t going to pass,’ ” said Councilwoman Abbe Land, who endorsed the opposition only last week, along with three council colleagues. Councilman Paul Koretz said he is undecided.

Even the powerful Coalition for Economic Survival, the renter’s rights group that dominates city politics, is taking no official position, though it opposed the last measure. “We felt there wasn’t as active a campaign,” said executive director Larry Gross.

The last-minute opposition campaign sprang up in response to the flyers, which were widely denounced as racist for warning that a card club would bring “Asian organized crime” to the largely white city. Local gambling opponents, worried that the flyers might end up pushing residents to support the measure, have set up a No on D Committee but have yet to put out their own mailers.

Initiative sponsors have been nearly invisible too. The sponsors, who spent lavishly to send campaign videotapes to 10,000 homes in 1990, are this time running a quiet door-to-door campaign aimed at getting only sure-fire supporters out for an election expected to draw few residents. So far this year, sponsors have spent less than a third of the $287,000 they poured into the 1990 effort--a sum that amounted to about $108 per vote.

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The initiative would allow the owners of the private Cavendish West Hollywood card club to open an 89-table card casino on La Brea Avenue, and add panguingue--or pan, a popular variation of gin rummy--to their current mix of bridge, rummy and backgammon.

The measure would permit all legal betting games except poker, but club owners insist they have no plans to host the big-money games, such as pai gow , that are played in other area card clubs. In accordance with California law, players would rent seats by the hour and bet against each other, rather than against the house. Up to 14% of club earnings would go to the city, along a sliding scale.

Chances for passage look better this year. To answer previous objections, club owners scratched poker and have asked for a much smaller club than the 200-table establishment sought in 1990. Sponsors are also winning new support, especially among business groups, by saying the club could make $1 million a year for the city. That argument is especially compelling as the City Council considers a proposed budget that includes a 4% utility tax--the city’s first--to avoid a projected shortfall caused by state cutbacks and the recession.

“The utility tax is what changed my mind,” said Ruth Williams, who opposed the 1990 measure as a member then of the city’s Public Safety Commission. Now Williams is campaigning for Proposition D.

The city’s Chamber of Commerce also switched sides to support the initiative. “It’s the financial times. They were tough two years ago. They’re even tougher now,” said Vee Mell, a pharmacy owner and chamber president.

It would take at least a year to open the new club, which Cavendish owners think would bring in between $8 million and $10 million in the first year. The membership-only club now takes in about $300,000 a year, according to a confidential investors’ proposal that the club prepared last year.

Opponents say voters are being misled by overly cheery predictions and, repeating charges made in the last campaign, they argue that a club would be a magnet for crime.

Critics claim that city earnings from the club, still years away, would be swallowed up by the need for added police and city oversight. They say other “shadow costs” may include a lower bond rating for the city, making it more expensive to borrow money, and higher insurance costs.

“I don’t buy the argument that this thing is going to bail the city out with little old ladies playing rummy,” said Adam Devejian, a financial analyst who co-chairs the No on D Committee. “The only people who benefit from these things are gamblers and people who make police cars.”

Gambling opponents point to well-publicized corruption cases in other Los Angeles County card clubs to back claims that casinos breed wrongdoing. Three council members in City of Commerce were convicted in the mid-1980s on corruption charges tied to a card club there. Two years ago, federal authorities seized a 20% stake in the giant Bicycle Club casino in Bell Gardens as part of a drug case. The club also has been investigated on allegations of loan-sharking and extortion.

A report last year by San Diego County Dist. Atty. Edwin L. Miller Jr. warned of a rising presence of Chinese and Vietnamese crime families in local card clubs. He urged voters to oppose clubs that were proposed in San Diego and National City.

But other experts see no connection between crime and card clubs. A new report by Sandra Sutphen, a political science professor at Cal State Fullerton, says card club cities tend to have slightly higher crime rates than others, but not because of the clubs. Sutphen and two other scholars examined 10 years of crime statistics for five cities in Los Angeles County with card clubs--before and after clubs were set up. Crime rates in the mostly industrial cities and in nearby communities did not rise with the creation of the clubs, the study concluded.

“Card clubs and crime are unrelated,” Sutphen said.

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Some advocates argue that the added private security around the proposed club might even cut crime in the East End neighborhood where it is planned. “It will not bring the criminal element. Rather the reverse--it will drive them out because of all the security,” Mell said.

Cavendish club owners and supporters are hoping that their emphasis on pan will draw an upscale Westside crowd. The fast-moving game is especially popular with members of the over-45 set, who turn their living rooms into dime-ante betting parlors for card klatches.

“This is a whole untapped area in West Hollywood. It’s middle-aged Jewish women that want a place to go to play,” said Williams, the former public-safety commissioner and an occasional pan player. “What’s the difference between that and bingo?”

Skeptics doubt that there is enough money in pan, bridge and pinochle to avoid adding more popular gambling games. They see the proposed pan club as a Trojan Horse disguising grander casino plans. “Ultimately they’re going to be looking for--and probably get--poker,” said gambling foe Steve Martin. “This is going to be a major, major facility.”

Cavendish owners deny hiding bigger plans. The current club’s aging clientele has forced managers to find fresh business by adding new games, according to the investors’ proposal, and they insist pan is the answer. Cavendish owners do not rule out all other popular games, but they vow to keep poker out.

“They’re not going to play poker. They saw two years ago that one of the many concerns was poker. They will not play it,” said Andrew Baldonado, a campaign consultant for the club.

With only 3,000 or so city voters expected to turn out June 8, the wild card in the campaign is who shows up. Both sides are targeting people who tend to vote often, rather than blanketing the city with mailers. While several business organizations have endorsed the initiative, other key groups are lining up against it. They include the West Hollywood Democratic Club and the group that sponsored last year’s referendum to create a city police force.

Some opponents complain that the City Council has not taken a strong enough role in resisting the club proposal. The council plans a vote opposing the measure at its June 7 meeting--just hours before polls open. In general, however, members who led the opposition last time are much less visible now. The loudest gambling critic on the council has been Mayor Sal Guarriello, who is sending out his own campaign mailer.

“The whole council just seems to have disappeared on this issue. They’ve gone AWOL,” said Martin, who is expected to run for City Council next year. “There’s a perception out there that the card club and the council have already reached an agreement.”

Councilwoman Land, who has consistently opposed the local gambling, denied that.

“I don’t think I’ve been quiet about it,” she said. Land said the council’s opposition to local gambling is well-known and added that some leaders are tired from last fall’s police initiative and other campaigns.

“People did not take (the gambling initiative) seriously. There’s also a lot of burnout,” she said. “At the last minute, people have said: ‘Hey, wait a minute. What if it passes?’ ”