Slot Machines Have Varying Track Records

In the late 1980s, when Gulfstream Park was campaigning to become a host track for the Breeders’ Cup races for the first time, a Florida delegation traveled to Lexington, Ky., to make a concerted pitch.

Included in the group was Jeb Bush, brother of the future president and Florida’s secretary of commerce at the time. The trip by Bush and the others was a success. The Breeders’ Cup came to Gulfstream in 1989 and has been held there twice since, drawing crowds of at least 45,000 every time.

But last month, when Florida’s racing community asked Bush, now the governor, for more support, he instead campaigned against the legalization of slot machines, which the tracks say are necessary for survival.

Four days before slot-machine referendums arrived on the ballot in two South Florida counties, Bush visited Miami and Fort Lauderdale, asking voters to reject the proposals, saying that gambling expansion would have a negative impact on the state, estimating that 90% of the money funneled into slot machines is lost by the gamblers.

The election unified the historically splintered parimutuel industry in Florida, but still the tracks -- thoroughbred, harness and greyhound -- and two jai alai frontons got only half a loaf. Slots were approved in Broward County, where Gulfstream is located, but in adjoining Miami-Dade County, the home of Calder Race Course, another thoroughbred track, the machines were defeated by about 6,500 votes.

This was the second alternative-gaming defeat in five months for Churchill Downs Inc., which owns Calder and Hollywood Park. A California racetrack coalition, after spending $25 million, was unable to get slot machines approved by the electorate in November.

Despite persistent rumors since then, Churchill has neither confirmed nor denied that it has put Hollywood Park up for sale.

“In a few months, we’ll comment specifically about our plans for Hollywood Park,” said Tom Meeker, chief executive of Churchill, which will run the 131st Kentucky Derby in Louisville on May 7.

“In California, we’ll continue to push for slots, because that’s the only way we’ll have a level, competitive playing field,” with the Indian casinos.

And Calder?

“We haven’t given up on South Florida racing,” Meeker said.

Calder, said the president of its track, Ken Dunn, would try to get the slot-machine issue back on the ballot for county voters in 2007. By then, under regulations established by the Florida state legislature, slots should be up and running at Gulfstream, one of Frank Stronach’s Magna Entertainment tracks, about 12 miles away. Gulfstream and Santa Anita are the linchpins of Magna.

“We hope they’re a big success over there,” Dunn said. “Because then we can say to the voters that this is the thing Miami-Dade and Calder also need.”

At Gulfstream today, the 54th edition of the Florida Derby will be run. It’s a $1-million race and a traditional prep for the Kentucky Derby. Gulfstream’s overnight purses -- stakes races are computed separately -- average $205,000 a day, but the track’s president, Scott Savin, said, “We should be north of $300,000 a day after we get the slots.”

Higher purses help tracks draw better horses. Charles Town, once a third-rate track in West Virginia, faced closure before local voters approved slots in 1996. Last year, Charles Town’s daily purses averaged $224,000.

Gulfstream used to have $300,000-a-day purses without slots, but this season has been a clinker. The track looks like a construction zone because Savin has been running his meet in the midst of a $145-million remodeling project. The gambling coalition might have been pulling together before the March referendum, but the tracks weren’t unified enough.

By many accounts, they underestimated John Brunetti, the contentious owner of picturesque Hialeah Park in Miami-Dade. Hialeah, after years of battling Gulfstream and Calder over racing dates, closed down three years ago, and now is without a license. Call the switchboard these days and you hear: “Press 1 for [catered] weddings; press 2 for real estate inquiries.”

Brunetti still entertains hopes of reopening Hialeah, but the language of the slot referendum would have precluded his track from getting the machines.

Brunetti’s long-time ally, Raul Martinez, the Democratic mayor of the city of Hialeah for 23 years, joined Jeb Bush, a Republican, in campaigning against slots. In an election postmortem, some in the racing coalition said that Martinez, had he wanted to, probably could have delivered enough Latino votes to carry the day for slots in Miami-Dade.

“The people who tried to promote the slot-machine measure were an arrogant group,” Martinez said. “I’m not anti-gambling, but I was against this. The racing industry is its own worst enemy, and they’re killing themselves. Before the referendum, not one racing person called me and asked for my help.”

Brunetti predicts that slots for Miami-Dade won’t be approved in 2007 either.

“They won’t even come close,” he said.

Track officials are cautious about being critical of Bush, because they know he’ll be influential in the legislature’s drafting of laws that will determine how many slots the successful tracks can have, what their hours of operation will be and how much the machines will be taxed. Much of the revenue from slots will go to Florida schools.