Spokesman says inside problems stifling casino campaign in Arkansas

James Jefferson

Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2000 | 9:16 a.m.

LITTLE ROCK - Internal strife could scuttle plans for a media blitz to promote a ballot initiative allowing casino gambling in Arkansas, the Amendment 5 campaign spokesman said Monday.

Arkansas Casino Corp. released information showing that tourism and recreation sales in neighboring Mississippi have boomed since that state authorized casinos gambling in 1992.

But Glen Hooks wouldn't give odds on ads promoting the potential boom for Arkansas in the two weeks before the Nov. 7 general election.

"Obviously, I would have liked to be on the air by now. I'm still hopeful to be on the air, I just don't know when that will be," Hooks said. "The money is there, it's just a matter of having these internal problems."

He declined to say what else would keep backers off the airwaves, but said "I'm speaking of something entirely different" than state securities charges against two Arkansas Casino Corp. board members last week.

Pulaski County Prosecutor Larry Jegley charged Bob Buchholz and Jim Harris of Dallas, alleging they sold stock without a license and lied to regulators.

Buchholz and Harris pleaded innocent Friday in Little Rock Municipal Court to charges that Hooks has suggested were political motivated. Jegley denied Hooks' allegations.

Hook said Monday that he would try to keep the board members' legal problems separate from the Amendment 5 campaign.

For now, Hooks said, the campaign consists of local appearances, phone banks and a debate Thursday between Harris and Larry Page, leader of a church-based group that initiated legal challenges that blocked casino votes in 1990 and 1994.

Voters soundly rejected a casino amendment in 1996 after backers spent millions of dollars.

"It's probably not internal strife. It's probably a spontaneous case of some intelligence" that Amendment 5 backers have not followed suit, said Page of the Arkansas Committee for Ethics Policy. "How much more good money do they want to throw after bad?"

Amendment 5 would authorize casinos in Pulaski and Garland counties and in four counties that border states with gambling. It also would provide for a state lottery and legalize charitable bingo.

In addition to paying tuition for all high school graduates, backers of the measure say lottery proceeds could allow the state to drop the sales tax on groceries.

The corporation said Friday that a state lottery would raise $230 million in its first year and generate enough profits to send every state high school graduate to a four-year college.

Backers have given no financial projections about how Arkansas would benefit from casinos.

They have said that Arkansans spend $300 million or more a year at Mississippi casinos.

On Monday, Hooks produced figures from Mississippi that showed tourism and recreation sales of $6 billion in the most recent fiscal year, up 200 percent since that state authorized casinos.

Mississippi also recorded big increases in jobs and in state and local tax revenue.

"That won't happen in Arkansas. We can't replicate what Mississippi has done," Page said, in part because gamblers going to other states won't divert to Arkansas.