Silks and Slots?

Retired Hall of Fame jockey Chris McCarron rides a golf cart these days, taking an occasional break from his post as Santa Anita Park general manager to shuttle visitors on tours of the racetrack, California’s crown jewel in the sport of kings.

“Down this path trod champions like Affirmed, Spectacular Bid, John Henry ... Seabiscuit,” said McCarron, slowing down the cart on a dirt lane along the barns, scruffy but storied structures that date to the Arcadia track’s opening 70 years ago.

But although Santa Anita still attracts star thoroughbreds, McCarron said, it draws increasingly fewer two-legged visitors, reflecting a nationwide trend that has seen the industry become increasingly dependent on off-track betting.

So McCarron and Santa Anita’s Canadian owners want to increase attendance and fatten race purses by building a slot machine pavilion near its European-style paddock, a gambit that critics say could ruin the track’s genteel traditions.

Santa Anita is one of five California tracks that could each win the right to operate 3,000 slot machines if state voters approve Proposition 68 in November. A percentage of slot receipts would go to purses.

The measure is part of a campaign across the country to pair slots with steeds, an effort that has angered anti-gambling forces as well as racing purists. Nine states allow slot machines at tracks, and proposals are pending in several more.

If Proposition 68 passes, Santa Anita and Hollywood Park could become the first tracks in their class to welcome a form of wagering considered low-rent when compared with handicapping finely bred animals and satin-wearing athletes.

Santa Anita, which has separate plans to build a mall and residences behind the paddock gardens, is widely ranked in the top tier of the world’s racing venues. Last year, it paid the most money in purses in the United States, and tallied wagers of $1 billion for its main meeting from December to April, the fifth-largest “handle” in its history.

And though the glamour has faded, the track founded by dentist and baseball executive Charles Strub claims a pedigree of patrons extending from old-money Pasadenans to Cecil B. DeMille, Bing Crosby and Walt Disney.

It also offers a picturesque setting matched by few tracks anywhere. The green and yellow grandstand is an Art Deco landmark, and it looks out at the San Gabriel Mountains. The vista is unspoiled by the city that surrounds the track, the freeways and subdivisions hidden by knolls and trees.

Scenery and blueblood lineage, however, don’t necessarily pay off financially, said McCarron, who became general manager last year.

“I was never of the mind-set that racing needed slot machines,” McCarron said as he wheeled the cart through the paddock gardens, where horses parade around a ring before they race, circling a bronze statue of Seabiscuit, whose triumphs were celebrated in a 2003 movie.

McCarron said he has had a change of heart because of the dwindling turnout, the explosion in Indian gambling and the prospect of out-of-state tracks dangling slot-sweetened purses to lure away trainers and horses.

Without slot machines, he added, Santa Anita would eventually have trouble replenishing its aging customer base with younger gamblers, and would see its purses and fields -- the number of horses per race -- shrink to the point where it can’t keep pace with competitors.

“To survive, it’s necessary to get slot machines,” McCarron said.

Many in the business share that view, but Arthur Hancock III, a Kentucky breeder whose horses run at Santa Anita, is a dissenter. He says slot machines tarnish racing and could drive people from the track.

“To me, they’re like the crack cocaine of gambling,” said Hancock, who has opposed efforts in his state to permit slot machines at tracks such as Churchill Downs, the Kentucky Derby showcase. Legislation that would legalize slot machines has stalled in Kentucky.

“We’re a sport you can bet on with pageantry,” Hancock said. “Slots don’t have anything to do with racing.... In the end, they’ll be our downfall.”

Tom Grey, executive director of the National Coalition Against Gambling Expansion, said promoting slot machines as a savior of racing is a scam.

“They’re looking to make big money,” he said of Santa Anita’s parent company, Magna Entertainment Corp. “A casino is much different than racing. Why would you pay to race horses when you’ve got all your money coming in from slots? A slot machine pays for itself in a month.”

Similar resistance is heard in Arcadia. “I think most folks in town don’t support slot machines at the racetrack, and that’s where I’m leaning,” said Mayor Gary Kovacic, whose city would receive a share of tax revenue from the slots.

Proposition 68 seeks to break the Indian monopoly on slot machines in California. It calls on tribes with casinos to pay 25% of their gambling proceeds to local governments and comply with environmental and campaign finance laws from which they are now exempt.

Because the tribes are sovereign entities, the proposition’s rules would not be mandatory. But if a single tribe refused to abide by them, the five tracks and 11 card rooms covered by Proposition 68 could plug in the slot machines. The horse arenas and poker parlors would pay 33% of their take from the devices to local governments.

Some tribes are backing a rival initiative, Proposition 70, which would grant them unlimited numbers of slot machines in exchange for slightly less than 9% of their net revenue paid to the state. A recent Times poll showed both measures failing.

In addition to Santa Anita and Hollywood Park, the tracks that could qualify for slot machines under Proposition 68 are Los Alamitos in Orange County, Bay Meadows in San Mateo and Golden Gate Fields in Albany, which Magna owns.

Santa Anita President Jack McDaniel said the future of his track isn’t riding on the initiative, and the course remains profitable despite the decline in attendance. “But we’ve got a huge potential market we’re not tapping into,” he said.

In the 1986-87 racing season, a year before the introduction of satellite betting in California, Santa Anita averaged about 30,000 daily ticket buyers. The figure was around 9,500 for the 2003-04 meeting.

Satellite, Internet and telephone wagering have kept Santa Anita’s handle fairly strong, as they have at other tracks in the $15-billion-a-year industry.

Racing proprietors, however, collect a smaller cut on bets placed off their premises. And they can’t sell hot dogs, beer and souvenirs to gamblers playing from afar.

“We’re asking too few people to come back too often to bet too much,” said McDaniel, seated in his stately grandstand office, the walls clad in 18th century English paneling. “We have to spread that out.”

In a side study, McDaniel admired sketches of the mall -- another potential attendance booster -- that Magna hopes to build with Los Angeles developer Rick Caruso, creator of the Grove in the Fairfax district.

The plans are in their early stages, but they have already caught the eye of anxious preservationists, who treasure Santa Anita as much for its historical significance as its architecture.

The track served as an assembly center for Japanese residents sent to World War II internment camps.

“It’s very important to the Japanese community,” said Ken Bernstein, a preservation director for the Los Angeles Conservancy.

Bernstein said Magna marred Santa Anita’s facade by erecting two boxy elevator towers at the grandstand shortly after buying the track in 1998.

“Those were particularly insensitive,” Bernstein said.

The conservancy has not taken a position on the slot machine initiative.

McDaniel said the preservationists need not worry.

“We’ve been part of the culture for decades,” he said of Santa Anita. “We do things with a great deal of style.”

He took a stroll to the paddock gardens as the track prepared for last Wednesday’s opening of its Oak Tree racing season. Meanwhile, it was taking bets for the horses running at the Los Angeles County Fair in Pomona, the action beamed to Santa Anita’s video monitors.

McDaniel walked to the track, marveling at the mountains and a sky feathered by clouds.

“This is that beauty shot, that Rose Parade shot,” he said. “This is the stuff that makes me want to get people out here.”

Opening day proved cloudier, and the turnout a middling 10,665.

In the Chandelier Room of the Turf Club, the track’s elegant watering hole, retired friends James Slater and Ken Mosley marked roughly half a century as Santa Anita regulars.

“This place used to be jammed,” Slater said. “Come here tomorrow and there’ll be half as many.”

Slater and Mosley said they will vote for Proposition 68, figuring it’s a longshot bid to recapture some of the glory days, when the crowds were large and Frank Sinatra and Betty Grable had cocktails at the bar.

What about tradition? Slater shook his head as he stood to bet on the fifth race.

“Tradition changes with the economy,” he said. “Tradition’s gone.”