Online Poker The Single Most Important Issue Since Yucca Mountain Says Reid

In a sharply worded letter to Republican Senator Dean Heller on Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid asserted that his colleague was avoiding the issue of legalizing online poker in their home state of Nevada, calling it “the most important issue facing Nevada since Yucca Mountain."

Reid was making reference to a planned deep geological repository storage facility that would have been located in the Yucca Mountain of south-central Nevada.  That project would eventually be scrapped in 2010.   

"As a result, we are at a standstill" on a matter crucial to the state's casino-based economy, Reid said.

Reid blames Heller for failing to produce enough Republican votes for a gaming bill heavily supported by casino executives in the state of Nevada. 

A Heller spokesperson insisted on Wednesday that the Senator "will continue to work with Senator (Jon) Kyl and the rest of the Republican conference to pass this legislation which is critically important to the state of Nevada.”

Reid had given Heller a deadline of this past Monday to produce 15 Republican votes that would prevent a filibuster.

"I am afraid that if the Senate acts first the House will feel itself jammed and it wouldn't go anywhere," Arizona Republican Senator Jon Kyl said in defense of his GOP party colleague. "The object here should be to pass a bill and not make Senator Heller look bad."

Kyl, who is a co-author of current existing Web gambling prohibition, the Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act (UIGEA), accused Reid on Wednesday of playing politics.

"Now the thing has blown up," Kyl said in regard to Reid’s letter to Heller. "Again, I want to work with Harry Reid to get this done. I regret to say what he has done here is going to make it a lot harder now. Instead of an approach by which we might have been able to bring people along, I think it looks to be what it is, and that is very political.

"It looks like some political hack wrote that letter for Harry.  I think he wants to get this done but he must appreciate that letter was going to make it very, very hard.

"I am distressed it has taken the turn that it has," Kyl added. "I am very concerned about that now."

Heller is in a hotly contested Senate race with Democrat Shelley Berkley.  Likewise, the only opposition to the Web gambling legislation in the state comes from casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who just happens to be one of the GOP’s biggest donors.

- Gilbert Horowitz, Gambling911.com