Palm Springs Voters OK Card Clubs : Gambling: Victory sets stage for state legalization drive. Coachella approves measure, but four cities defeat ordinances and one race remains undecided.

Voters in two of seven cities this week approved new card club ordinances, including a solid majority in Palm Springs where backers will seek to parlay the victory into a bid allowing full-scale casino gambling in California.

Besides the 2-1 victory in the desert resort community, a card club measure was successful in Coachella near Palm Springs. Voters in Suisun City, which is about 40 miles west of Sacramento, appeared to narrowly favor a card club casino on a riverboat berthed on the Sacramento River Delta. But absentee ballots are still being counted.

Four cities turned down card clubs--Pomona, Ontario, Hesperia and San Mateo. The defeat in San Mateo killed off a plan to follow the example of Hollywood Park in Inglewood and open a card club at the Bay Meadows racetrack.

Several cities contemplating card club ordinances chose this year-end period to put the decision to a local vote to beat a statewide three-year moratorium on the spread of card clubs that begins Jan. 1. Two cities--South San Francisco and Irwindale--that had recently voted turned down the clubs. Elections are coming up soon in Hawaiian Gardens, Azusa, Colton and the San Francisco suburb of Pacifica.

More than 250 card clubs operate in 145 California cities where bets totaling about $8.4 billion cross the poker and Asian games tables annually, said state Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren, who has pressed for more staff and authority to monitor their activities.

Attempting to up the ante on California gaming, the backers in Palm Springs have pledged to push for a statewide vote on allowing Nevada-type casino gambling.

Developer Mark Bragg has said he will launch a petition-gathering drive to qualify a full gaming initiative for the November, 1996, ballot. The measure would restrict gaming to a few resort areas, Bragg said.

Jessica Scarff, campaign director for Bragg’s Palm Springs Gaming Coalition, said proponents will start soon to advance the initiative effort.

“As far as I know, we’re going for it,” Scarff said, “as soon as we find the locations [to set up casinos] and the people who would like to be involved” in campaigning.

Gaming expert I. Nelson Rose, a law professor at Whittier College, said it is not easy and almost unprecedented for state voters to approve high-stakes gaming, but that a modified version--which limits casinos to a few remote locations--might succeed.

“I think Californians would vote for low-stakes casinos within 10 miles of the border of Nevada,” he said. Rose helped Bragg draft the Palm Springs card room initiative, but said he has no role in the developer’s further gaming interests.

Bragg has said he can raise the funds needed to collect the more than 690,000 signatures necessary to qualify the initiative for the ballot. But he is likely to face a huge, multifaceted opposition that would include Lungren, Nevada casinos, other card clubs and religious groups.

If the Bragg proposal gets on the ballot, vowed Traditional Values Coalition leader the Rev. Lou Sheldon, “we’re sitting in the firehouse ready to roar out” to fight it.

The outcome of the card club vote in Palm Springs adds a new element to California gaming. Of three additional card clubs authorized for the city, one will combine shopping in a retail mall with gambling, a project pursued by Edward J. DeBartolo Jr., a mall developer and owner of the San Francisco 49ers pro football team.

DeBartolo, who owns racetracks in other states, has failed to intertwine mall and gaming activity, both in South San Francisco where voters turned down card clubs in September, and in Pomona, also a card club loser in Tuesday’s vote.

In addition to local elections to determine if new card clubs may operate, officials in two cities where card parlors exist have loosened the rules to allow more gaming action. The San Jose City Council gave its approval Tuesday, while the City Council in Stockton earlier approved the gaming expansion.

The San Bernardino City Council voted earlier to set an election in March after the statewide moratorium deadline. If passed, the measure would allow card clubs into town after the three-year period elapses, or sooner if the moratorium law is superseded by the passage of new legislation.