Card Club Flyer Is Branded Racist by Pomona Officials : Politics: Mailer funded by out-of-town casinos claims that proposed Champs site would invite organized crime.

An inflammatory election mailer that slams a proposed card club in Pomona was put out by a group funded largely by existing Southern California card clubs.

The flyer, which Pomona city officials have labeled racist, claims that the Chinese American owner of one of Pomona’s proposed clubs would invite Asian organized crime into the city.

Financial disclosure statements reveal that the flyer was produced by a Los Angeles political action committee called Residents to Protect Our Neighborhoods that receives large contributions from gaming associations and card clubs in Gardena and Bell Gardens.

The mailer shows photos of a police officer crouching beside a bloody corpse and another officer comforting a grieving relative. It says: “Leo Chu is inviting Asian gangs to Pomona. He’s opening our doors to violence, armed robbery and murder.”

Chu is president of Champs, the operating group for one of two proposed card clubs in Pomona, and the one further along in the planning stages.

The mailer also charges that if voters approve card clubs, Chu and his “out of town gambling pals . . . get the cash. We get the crime. . . . Prostitutes welcome. Violent Asian gangs, come on down. . . . Pomona wants you.”

Chu, a Hong Kong immigrant and former textile manufacturer who recently sold his Vernon-based firm to a Fortune 500 company, called the accusations nonsense and says the mailer is a “racist character assassination.”

“Do you think they’d be doing this if my name were Gonzalez or Bernstein?” he asked.

Chu’s group has raised $85,950 for the election, disclosure statements show, and his campaign has leased two storefronts in downtown Pomona to promote the clubs, which one Champs flyer says will bring 1,000 jobs to the city. Chu’s card club would sit on a 14-acre industrial site near the Pomona (60) Freeway.

The City Council has already approved the concept of card clubs, saying they will bring up to $10 million in annual revenue to Pomona, which is plagued by high unemployment, chronic poverty and urban decay.

Champs has already received council approval and the city is reviewing the application of a second club, called Tradewinds, said Severo Esquivel, Pomona city manager. But opponents of the clubs gathered signatures to force the issue to a referendum.

On Tuesday, Pomona voters will be asked to vote on Proposition A, which would allow card clubs in the city. The two-part proposition allows voters to decide separately on Champs and Tradewinds. A second measure, Proposition B, would ban all card clubs from the city forever.

In the unlikely case that both measures pass, the one receiving the most votes will take precedence, Esquivel said.

City officials, who hope the card clubs will provide a needed infusion of cash into Pomona, are furious about the mailer. Last week, Pomona Mayor Edward S. Cortez called the card club mailer part of a “negative, racist campaign” and Councilwoman Nell Soto called it “an abomination.”

But the mailer is similar in tone to anti-gambling literature circulated two years ago in Bellflower, where citizens defeated a gambling proposal after a bitter campaign.

“Murder, suicide, drugs, corruption, gangs, addiction,” trumpeted one of the flyers paid for the nearby Bicycle Club in Bell Gardens and its then-general manager, George Hardie, who still is a partner. “Do you really want this gambling scheme in our city?”

Neither Hardie nor his attorney could be reached for comment this week.

Financial disclosure statements show that Residents to Protect Our Neighborhoods has been active in defeating card club proposals in other cities in 1993 and 1994.

The group spent $18,670 to defeat a card club measure in South El Monte in 1994 and $40,273 to defeat one in Bellflower in 1993, disclosure statements show. During that time, Residents to Protect Our Neighborhoods received contributions of $28,800 from the Bicycle Club Casino in Bell Gardens, $10,000 from Russmar Investment Corp., which owns the Normandie Club in Gardena, and $7,050 from the California Sports, Entertainment and Gaming Assn.

Although figures for 1995 are not available, the group also produced Pomona’s controversial mailer, using a bulk mail permit owned by Milo E. Rodich, a Pomona resident who opposes card clubs and ran unsuccessfully for City Council last month.

David Gould, listed as treasurer for Residents to Protect Our Neighborhoods, did not return phone calls from The Times. A woman who answered the office phone declined to answer questions.

But in an interview, Rodich said he allowed the group to use his mailing permit because they are “a group of Christian men . . . who came to me knowing that I opposed gambling and asked for my help.”

Rodich said he didn’t see the flyer before allowing the group to use his mail permit but that he believes its information is factual.

“I don’t know why people in Pomona are getting so upset,” he added.

Pomona’s local anti-card club group, which had nothing to do with the flyer, also did not object to it.

“Any place where there’s large-scale gambling going on attracts criminals,” said Ardis Guthrie, treasurer for the Committee Against Card Club Casinos in Pomona. “And there’s a long history of organized crime infiltrating gambling operations.”

Guthrie, whose group has raised $11,111 to Chu’s $85,950, says the committee was contacted by existing card clubs but voted early on not to accept money from them.