Columnist Dean Juipe: Concern replaces laughter

Dean Juipe

Friday, April 21, 2000 | 10:53 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

Up until a couple of weeks ago, the typical Nevadan chose one of two ways to react to the almost daily reports out of Washington that politicians were mobilizing first to outlaw legalized wagering on collegiate sports, and, later, pro sports as well. Nevadans laughed at or ridiculed the politicos and told them to mind their own business.

The latter, flippant, response was used in this space earlier this year when Utah's Orrin Hatch was leading the anti-gaming crusade.

But now there's a third reaction in vogue and it reflects an updated perspective. Now Nevadans have cause for alarm.

As difficult as it is to believe and as irrational as it appears on its own merits, perhaps a majority of those in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate seem willing to pull the plug on sports wagering in Nevada. It's as if they're itching to do it, for one reason or another.

It's crazy, of course, and maybe even stupid. If sports gaming is abolished in Nevada it won't disappear -- it will never disappear -- but it will be driven underground, where bookies across the country will begin reaping a record harvest.

Instead of the MGM or the Tropicana making a buck or two (and paying taxes off it) from sports wagering, the profits would be dispersed among guys who only use their first names and who collect their overdue debts by utilizing a little muscle.

The government will have succeeded only in creating additional lawbreakers.

Beyond that truism, the origin of this crusade remains perplexing. This is one of the few things they didn't ask on the long census form, but it's safe to say the vast majority of Americans have no trouble with Nevada taking wagers on sports. There is no groundswell of support to eliminate legalized sports gaming in the single state where it has been allowed.

Yet here's Arizona senator John McCain acting as if the public is outraged, and replacing Hatch as the de facto leader of the anti-gaming coalition.

There's a certain irony involved, as McCain has been known to frequent Las Vegas and -- presumably -- has had a room, a meal or a ticket to a show comped to him by a gracious hotel. Yet now he's doing the city a disservice, fueled perhaps in part by his desperation to remain an authoritative political figure in spite of losing out on his recent presidential bid. (This week he's in South Carolina, trying to tell those people what should and shouldn't be flown from their statehouse flagpole.)

McCain's ego aside, the anti-gaming attack may have something to do with jealousy. Las Vegas has been sizzling from an economic standpoint for so many years that just this week a national magazine referred to the city as "the new capital of the free world," and it wasn't being the least bit pretentious about it.

Maybe politicians, if not the people they represent, are feeling a need to knock the city down a peg or two. If so, it's vindictive and foolhardy.

At least we know legalized sports wagering won't go quietly. Nevada lobbyists will defend the state's rights and the courts may yet become involved.

But right now it's the anti-gaming side with the momentum.

For a while at least, the laughter has been stifled.