Gambling Industry Spent $14 Million to Defeat Ballot Question in Mass
BOSTON (Associated Press) -- Casino companies and their supporters spent nearly $14 million in their successful campaign to defeat a ballot question on repealing the state's casino law.
Campaign filings submitted this week show more than half of that spending -- $7.6 million -- came in the days leading up to the Nov. 4 election, thanks to major contributions from the state's three licensed casino operators: Wynn Resorts, MGM Resorts International and Penn National Gaming.
That funding helped the Committee to Protect Massachusetts Jobs air thousands of television advertisements in the run up to the election.
Anti-casino activists spent roughly $650,000 on their efforts, with just $76,000 spent in the final days.
Voters, in turn, rejected the casino repeal question by a 20 percentage point margin.
The more than $15 million spent in the casino fight makes it easily the most expensive of this year's four ballot questions. It also bests a $13 million record set in 2006 for a failed ballot initiative to allow wine sales in groceries, according to data from the state campaign finance office.
The more than $15 million in spending in the casino repeal battle approaches the highest combined total for ballot question spending in Massachusetts, according to the state campaign finance office.
That $16.1 million spending record was set in 1992, when four questions were on the ballot, including ones dealing with recyclables, tobacco education, taxing hazardous waste and public disclosure of certain corporate tax records.
By comparison, Republican Charlie Baker and Democrat Martha Coakley spent a combined $7.5 million in this year's closely-watched governor's race. (That contest, however, also drew some $17 million in spending from so-called super PACs and outside political groups.)
The total amount in spending on the casino question and the three other questions on the Nov. 4 ballot likely will grow: the reports that were due Nov. 5 only cover the period from Oct. 16 to Nov. 1.
Ballot question committees will file updated reports on Nov. 20.
Among this year's ballot questions, the next highest in spending was the proposed bottle deposit expansion, which saw nearly $10.5 million in spending.
That question, which failed, would have extended the state's 5-cent bottle deposit on beer and soft drink containers to bottled water, sports drinks and other bottled beverages.
Opponents, including supermarkets and the Washington, D.C-based American Beverage Association, spent about $8.8 million through their advocacy group, "Stop Forced Deposits."
Supporters of the proposal, including the Massachusetts chapter of the Sierra Club, spent over $1.6 million as of Nov. 1.
The ballot question that successfully repealed a state law indexing the gas tax to inflation generated $3.4 million in spending.
And the question to allow most workers in the state to earn paid sick time, which also passed, generated just over $800,000 in spending.
