Dispute over Ohio anti-casino ad escalates

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) – Campaigns for and against a fall ballot issue legalizing casinos in Ohio are locked in a bitter battle over a new TV ad airing statewide that claims out-of-staters would take the best jobs.

It’s the latest turn in an increasingly nasty and expensive campaign over whether casinos should be brought to four Ohio cities: Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Toledo. Both proponents and opponents have business interests at stake.

On Thursday, the anti-casino TruthPAC, which sponsored the disputed 30-second spot, called for an investigation of its rival, the Ohio Jobs & Growth Committee, alleging it illegally obtained a copy of the ad before it aired.

In a letter to Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien, TruthPAC cited a letter dated last Friday from the casino committee’s lawyer, Don McTigue. The letter said the ad’s contents were false and misleading and warned against its airing.

TruthPAC also pointed O’Brien to public statements by the casino campaign acknowledging it saw the ad in advance.

O’Brien doesn’t have original jurisdiction in elections complaint cases. The complaints must first be heard by the Ohio Elections Commission, which then would decide whether to make a criminal referral.

Jobs & Growth spokesman Bob Tenenbaum said his committee received a copy of the ad from someone at Time Warner, TruthPAC’s ad consultant. He said he presumed the committee was asked to review the ad because its contents were so spurious. TruthPAC has stood by the spot as “100 percent accurate.”

Time Warner has told TruthPAC that a local account executive lost his job after the ad was shared, said TruthPAC spokeswoman Sandy Theis.

In the spot, TruthPAC uses help wanted ads placed in Las Vegas and Atlantic City newspapers to suggest out-of-staters are being recruited to take casino jobs. The ad also cites a recent university finding that the 34,000 jobs promised by casino backers would never exist all at one time.

Tenenbaum said the pro-casino committee did not place the help wanted ads pictured in the TV spot. There’s no logic in promising jobs today for casinos that wouldn’t be up and running for a couple years, he claimed.

The ads were placed by a small Native American-owned gaming equipment supplier, Ixtapa Gaming LLC, based in Nevada.

Company president Candice Chandler-DeGregorio issued an e-mail statement Thursday explaining that jobs are often forthcoming to a state even before casinos are fully operational.

She said her firm is nonpolitical and has taken no position for or against the Ohio pro-casino Issue 3. “We are not affiliated with any entity supporting or opposing that proposal,” she said.

In the mid-1990s, however, Chandler-DeGregorio was a critical player in a negotiation between the Chemechuevi Indian Tribe in southern California and business magnate Donald Trump, who wanted to build a casino on the tribe’s reservation. Trump and Jeffrey Jacobs, the Cleveland developer behind TruthPAC, share a relationship with Roger Stone, an adviser and political consultant.

Ron Escobar, secretary treasurer of the Chemechuevi tribal council, said he was present at meetings in which Trump’s emissaries were sent to woo support from tribal leaders. The effort was ultimately scuttled by a lawsuit.

“Candice was the one who made the connection with Donald Trump’s people. She was pretty much instrumental in our committee,” Escobar recalled Thursday. “She was already involved in the gaming industry, so either she found them or they found her.”

A telephone message was left with a person at
Chandler-DeGregorio’s home Thursday. Escobar said he had no
recollection of the group specifically meeting Stone during the
tribe’s casino negotiations.

Theis said no one affiliated with TruthPAC, including Stone, had anything to do with placing the ads.

The group shined light instead on another political consultant, Rex Elsass, who is working for the pro-casino campaign. Elsass owns The Strategy Group for Media, the entity that TruthPAC alleges improperly accessed its ad.

Elsass was a member of the notorious “Nasty Boys” in the 1990s, so-called for the dirty campaign tricks they employed. Two employees of Elsass on the 1993 U.S. Senate campaign of Bernadine Healy were disciplined and Elsass ultimately resigned after the Ohio Republican Party found its fundraising list had been stolen and improperly used to solicit donors.

The party chairman at the time, Bob Bennett, is also a consultant to the Issue 3 campaign.

–––

On The Net:

TruthPAC: www.truthpac.org

Ohio Jobs & Growth Committee: www.yesonissue3.com