Roosevelt: Gambling Is Election Year Issue

During a press conference yesterday for Democratic gubernatorial nominee Mark Roosevelt '78, an angry bystander demanded to know the candidate's views on Haiti.

But Haiti, like crime and health care issues, was not Roosevelt's focal point, and he quickly shrugged off the question.

Instead, Roosevelt focused on what he has made the primary matter of the campaign--the possible implementation of casino gambling in Massachusetts if incumbent Governor William F. Weld '66 is reelected.

"Massachusetts will be Atlantic City-ized if Weld is reelected," Roosevelt said.

In a race in which there are few differences between incumbent and challenger, Roosevelt has chosen gambling as one of the few holes in an otherwise air-tight Weld campaign.

Roosevelt said Weld has been inconsistent in his views on the expansion of casinos in the New Bedford and Springfield area.

According to letters written by Weld in the early '80s released earlier this year by the Roosevelt campaign, the governor appeared adamantly opposed to casinos.

"I don't know what made Gov. Weld change his mind," Roosevelt said, sarcastically.

In a letter dated Sept. 24, 1982, Weld stated that he thought that casinos bring "increases in violent crime, organized crime and public corruption."

Then Weld stated in a letter dated February 8, 1983, that he "continues to believe that the legalization of casino gambling in Massachusetts would be a grave error."

But by the early '90s Weld's position on the issue seemed less clear, Roosevelt said.

While speaking out against the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, a federal law giving Native Americans the ability to run gambling facilities as a way of improving tribal well-being. Weld promoted legislation to let race-track owners run off-track betting salons complete with video poker games, Roosevelt alleged at the conference.

Mastermind

Roosevelt has chosen to paint Weld as "the mastermind behind the casino expansion plans in Massachusetts," noting that at least three of the governor's top political advisers work directly for casino gaming interests.

Roosevelt said that unlike Weld, he believes gambling will reinforce the wrong views for children, increase crime, cost the state millions of dollars in law enforcement, devastate small businesses and increase the compulsive gambling rate in the state.

Paula Popeo, a Weld campaign spokesperson, responded to Roosevelt's accusations in a phone interview by calling the Democratic candidate "a liar and a hypocrite."

Popeo said Roosevelt has misconstrued several crucial facts in the matter.

According to a recent statement issued by Weld, Roosevelt "knows that the governor only supports one or two casinos in Massachusetts."

"Mark Roosevelt's opposition to gambling is new and entirely politically driven," Weld said in the statement. "He has supported horse racing and as late as last year he supported expanding gambling in Massachusetts."

Roosevelt and his running mate, Harvard Divinity School Luce Fellow Robert K. Massie Jr., will challenge Weld and Lt. Governor A. Paul Cellucci on November 8.

Currently Weld maintains a significant lead over Roosevelt.

A Boston Globe poll published yesterday had Weld and Celluci leading the Democratic contenders 60 percent to 29 percent. According to the poll, even Democratic voters hold Weld in higher esteem than they do Roosevelt