"If there was one special interest Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vilified most while he ran to replace ex-Gov. Gray Davis in the 2003 recall election, it was Indian casinos.

Yet, few special interests have fared better under Schwarzenegger's administration than those same gaming palaces.

Not only have they multiplied the numbers of slot machines operating in their dozens of gaming houses all over California, but the governor has done all he could to allow them to move off the reservations and rancherias to which the year-2000 Proposition 1A appeared to limit their gaming.

Not only did he approve a huge casino in the San Francisco Bay area's urban suburb of San Pablo, only to see it seriously scaled back after locals objected, but now he's OK'd side-by-side casinos in the high desert city of Barstow for two poverty-stricken tribes whose lands lie hundreds of miles from the planned casino sites.

The obvious rationale for Schwarzenegger's apparent Indian gaming flip-flop is money. He sees tribal casinos as an effortless way to raise funds for the state without hiking taxes for anyone else."

Get the Story:
Thomas D. Elias: Governor finds casinos not really a special interest (The Ventura County Star 3/24)
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