Sale Serves as a Warning to Sacramento

California horse racing announced Wednesday that it had had enough. It had sat quietly at the dinner table for too long. It was time to pound its fists and knock over the salad.

In a news conference called to announce the sale of the venerable Hollywood Park race track, two men who have spent a lifetime conducting business with quiet, understated dignity became Howard Beale in the movie “Network.” They were mad as hell and they weren’t going to take it anymore.

If that characterization of Thomas Meeker and Terry Fancher is exaggerated, it is only slightly so. This was more a leverage play than a sale announcement. It was a thrown gauntlet, a line in the sand. There were no punches pulled, no parsing of language. Hard questions were met with hard answers.

Meeker, chief executive of Churchill Downs, the company that has owned Hollywood Park since 1999, announced that they had sold the Inglewood track to Bay Meadows, the company that runs a race track of the same name in San Mateo and also does large-scale real estate development. But this was far from Meeker passing the baton to Fancher, president of the corporation that owns Bay Meadows, and stepping aside with a pat on the back and a sigh of relief. The old owner stood next to the new owner like two warriors, waiting to take on the incoming arrows together.

What happened Wednesday was gutsy, brilliant and also somewhat desperate.

California racing, struggling for years in a climate of tough taxation, increased regulation and what it would term unfair competition, found a way to really go public, to really make some noise.

This wasn’t a firecracker, it was the whole show. Meeker and Fancher lit the fuse and rolled it into Sacramento, at the feet of legislators and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The message was that California racing demands help or it will take its saddle and go home, to just about any other state in the country because any of them, in the view of horsemen here, treat their sport more fairly than California.

The Hollywood Park-Bay Meadows deal is a three-year power play. It says that, if the economic climate for the racing industry doesn’t improve in that time, Bay Meadows will turn the 238 acres of Hollywood Park into condominiums and shops and restaurants and hotels, a plan and a time frame similar to what the Northern California company is doing at its San Mateo track.

“We don’t know how much more clear the message could be,” Fancher said. “A huge track in Northern California and a huge track in Southern California would be gone.”

Racing, long battling increased worker’s compensation costs, sought to get help a year or so ago through legislation that would have allowed slot machines at its tracks, banking on the additional revenue generated to boost its purses and its on-site attendance. Racing shot itself in the foot years ago in attendance by allowing off-track and satellite wagering.

But desired legislation for slot machines failed, as the Indian casino lobby won out. And when little or no relief in workman’s comp was forthcoming, racing’s chance for any sort of economic reversal in California was doomed. So, after months of quiet hand-wringing and failed inroads in Sacramento, racing has branched off into a new sport. Hardball.

Part of the brilliance of Wednesday’s announcement is that it so publicly drops the hot potato in Sacramento’s lap. If there is no action, the villain will be clear, at least in the minds of racing people.

Meeker said that part of Churchill’s sale agreement was that, were the “climate here to change,” Churchill has options to get back in the game, options to reinvest in Hollywood Park. And he said his company was eager to do so, almost as if he still was having trouble coming to grips with what had happened to his sport and his investment here and still couldn’t fathom that somebody in power in Sacramento wouldn’t come to his senses.

Both Meeker and Fancher said over and over that there are more than 60,000 people employed by horse racing in Southern California. That was another clear jab at Sacramento, where the employment card does, and should, push all sorts of buttons.

And the final brilliance is that, while Meeker and Fancher are clearly fighting for their industry’s life here, they can’t be accused of calling a hollow bluff. Personally and emotionally, they may lose if Sacramento yawns and waves good-bye, but there will be no business loss. Real estate development in Inglewood, in one of the largest urban plots of land left in the state, is a certain cash cow.

Sacramento, of course, may yawn and turn its back. It may legitimately have bigger agendas, much larger blocks of constituents than 60,000 race employees, much bigger losses of face than two horse tracks folding.

But you have to give California horse racing credit for one thing after Wednesday’s power play. Some major players in the sport may eventually go, but they won’t go quietly.