Son of Traditional Values Coalition founder took casino cash

Monday, Aug. 2, 1999 | 9:20 a.m.

Steve Sheldon and his Rex Co. received the money since 1993, in part to help stir religious opposition to new card clubs in five cities that would compete with the casinos, the newspaper reported Sunday, citing an investigation by the state Fair Political Practices Commission.

Sheldon, 34, is a legal consultant with his father's group, a conservative religious organization that has offices here. He declined to be interviewed by the Register.

However, he acknowledged in a deposition last year that casinos paid him to organize churches and perform grassroots work to stop the approval of new card clubs.

"I think it was important that I didn't - that I didn't want the religious communities to know," he said.

Gambling consultants who hired Sheldon said they understood that they were getting the help of his father's group, tied to 43,000 churches nationwide.

"I never had a direct conversation with Lou," gambling consultant Charles G. "Jerry" Westlund Jr. said. "However, it was clear what you were hiring Steve Sheldon to do. And then Lou would turn up at the rallies. I hired Steve Sheldon and the Traditional Values Coalition to stir up anxiety in those communities."

Lou Sheldon said he never, to his knowledge, received any of the money paid to his son from the Commerce Casino, the largest card club in California.

However, he and his group did receive an additional $20,000 in casino industry donations, the FPPC said.

That included a $10,000 donation from the Hollywood Park racetrack in 1994.

"Politics makes strange bedfellows," the Presbyterian minister said. "The devil had that money long enough. It was about time we got our hands on it."

Sheldon, 65, also received a $10,000 consulting fee last year from a coalition - funded mainly by Nevada casinos - that unsuccessfully fought Proposition 5. The initiative, passed in November, would allow expanded gambling on California Indian reservations, but implementation has been halted by legal challenges.

"He was basically a consultant and also assisted us in outreaching to some of the Christian and religious groups," said Gina Stassi, spokeswoman for Nelson Communications, which worked for the coalition.

Casino payments to Steve Sheldon came to light in the wake of a bitterly contested 1995 card-club ballot measure in Pico Rivera that led to the FPPC investigation and federal lawsuits.

The Commerce Casino and the Bicycle Club Casino ultimately agreed to pay a total of $166,000 in civil fines to settle suits for failure to disclose money spent to defeat card-club elections.