7 March 27 - april 2, 2025 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents lion-dollar campaign donations, including a $100 million donation to a pro-Trump political action committee. Before he died in 2021, the conservative family patriarch was re- vered as a “kingmaker” for his heavy political sway backed by his thick wallet. The Las Vegas Sands Corp., the casino conglomerate founded by Sheldon Adelson, is the third-largest casino company in the world in terms of revenue. After his death, his widow became chief executive officer of the family busi- ness. Now, city councils in Dallas and Irving have reviewed zoning laws as rumors emerge that Miriam Adelson is hop- ing to expand the chain to the Lone Star State and has the name of Texas’ most powerful names pre-written on check memo lines. Ahead of the last legislative session in 2023, Adelson donated $3.3 million to Texas politicians and committees, including $1,000,000 directly to Gov. Greg Abbott. This year, she upped the ante and donated $13.7 million in the first 10 months of 2024, as The Dallas Morning News re- ported. This year, a Super PAC dedicated to the re-elec- tion of GOP Sen. Ted Cruz received another $1,000,000 donation. The billionaire matriarch’s strong presence behind the curtain at the Legislature and in the city highlights a two- pronged issue about the status of legal bets: large-scale casi- nos versus online sports bets. Lawmakers are divided. Some support online sports betting while opposing resort casinos; others support both, and some don’t want to see any of it in Texas. The conversation in Dallas primarily centers on the potential for a full-blown ca- sino. “Some casinos seem a little dingy and run down and seedy,” West said. “That’s, in my mind, exactly what we don’t want in our city. If you take a look at the facilities that are cre- ated by the Sands Corporation., those types of destination resorts where there’s an op- portunity to have concerts and conventions and activities that could supplement our downtown, to me, that’s very attractive, and it’s something we should welcome to our city and find a way to manage it properly, that obtained the benefits and effectively manage the problems.” But Adelson’s purchase of the Mavs and prominence in gambling also illuminated ongoing nationwide progress toward legal- izing sports betting. For years, the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) outlawed placing bets on sports, save for exceptions in Delaware, Montana, Nevada and Oregon. In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal law, and the list of states with legal sports betting quickly grew. The call to put Texas on that list is strong. Each state has its own rules around sports wagers and where you can place them. Retail wagers, placed in-person at licensed venues, are legal in 36 states, and entirely digi- tized online wagers are legal in 33. Whether you bet in per- son or online, the winnings are still taxed and sent to state and city governments. Gambling Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow G ambling and Texas have an on-again-off-again relation- ship; the activity and many similar “vices” were out- lawed during the Progressive Era of the early 20th century. But when the economy crashed hard and fast dur- ing the Great Depression, the state was desperate to gener- ate tax revenue, and placing bets on horse racing was legalized in 1933. Four years later, the legislation was re- pealed. At the time, North Texas had the only two race tracks in the state. The region’s progressive and accepting attitude toward betting has remained. Betting never left the political mainstage, and in the ’60s, Red Berry, a prolific underground gambler from San Anto- nio, won a seat on the Texas House of Representatives on a pro-gambling platform. The rough-and-tumble politician, who was acquitted of murder three times, died before the state amended its Constitution to again allow parimutuel betting on horse races and established the Texas Racing Commission in 1987. After the lottery was established in 1991, gambling progress quieted. But gaming bills have been filed each session since at least 2009. In 2023, House Joint Resolution 155, barely missed the two-thirds minimum required to clear the House by one vote. If it had passed voters would have been allowed to vote on a constitutional amendment establishing eight casinos in the state’s largest metropolitan areas and levied a 15% tax revenue, most of which would go to public education. It was the furthest a piece of gambling legislature had progressed, but still did not come close to legalization in Texas. It wasn’t taken up by the Senate, where Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has long been adamantly opposed to expanded gambling. But the resolution failed before Adelson became a house- hold name to North Texans and before she went all-in on the Legislature. This session, a slew of bills to bring gambling and sports betting to Texas were filed in both chambers. State Rep. Charlie Geren, who backed HJR 155, has filed another house joint resolution to allow Texas voters to de- cide if gambling should be legalized this session. State Sen. Nathan Johnson from Dallas County filed a last-minute Sen- ate joint resolution with the same intention. State Sen. Carol Alvarado has been consistently filing gaming legislation since 2009. This year, a new Senate joint resolution from the Houston senator would allow sports bets to be placed in per- son at casinos. In the past, legalizing gambling has been a hard no. Pat- rick, leader of the Texas Senate, is one of the most outspoken voices against gambling and has clarified his stance that the state will never see a casino or sports betting so long as he is running the show. Patrick maintains that measures have lim- ited support from the GOP senators. “Texas is a red state,” Patrick wrote on X in 2023. “Yet the House vote on sports betting was carried by a Dem majority. The Texas Senate doesn’t pass bills with GOP in the minor- ity. The GOP majority guides our path.” Similarly, a dozen Republican members of the House ex- pressed their confidence in the failure of gambling bills in a letter to the House State Affairs Committee chair. The letter was signed by North Texans: Rep. Mitch Little of Denton County, Rep. Keresa Richardson of Collin Couty and Rep. Katrina Pierson of Collin County. “We are confident this legislation does not have the votes necessary to pass the Texas House this session,” the letter reads. “Given the certainty of its failure, I urge you not to waste valuable committee time on an issue that is dead on arrival.” But gambling lobbyists don’t need to fold just yet, as sup- port for gaming slowly grows. In 2015, Gov. Greg Abbott wrote a letter to the Texas Lot- tery Commission chairman advising the organization to abandon attempts to expand gambling in the state. “State laws on gaming are to be viewed strictly as prohibi- tive to any expansion of gambling. This statutory framework is properly intentioned to protect our citizens, and I support it wholeheartedly,” Abbott wrote. Since then, the governor has changed his tune. In the 10 years since Abbott has become more open to the future of gaming in Texas, he has become one of the primary recipi- ents of Adelson’s donations. “What I believe about online gaming, it would expand gam- ing in the state of Texas,” Abbott said in a 2025 interview with Fox News. “It requires a constitutional amendment. What I’m in favor of is giving it to the voters and let the voters decide.” In most states, gambling and the state lottery are over- seen by the same association, but recent scandals for the Texas Lottery have significantly dampened support for any expansion. In the last two years, potentially fraudulent lot- tery payouts of over $80,000,000 have triggered state inves- tigations into the Texas Lottery Commission. “The Lottery Commission mess is likely the final nail in the coffin for gambling legislation in 2025,” Mark Jones, a political scientist at Rice University, told The Dallas Morning News. “It raises serious concerns about the ability of the state to regulate the far more lucrative industries of casino gambling and online sports betting.” Former Gov. Rick Perry has also come around to the idea of expanded betting and even appeared in a commercial for the Sports Betting Alliance. Perry is also a beneficiary of Adelson’s mega donations and echoes a common sentiment among Republican politicians who have warmed up to the idea: Betting happens anyway, so Texas might as well make some money from it. “I’m not in favor of expansion of gambling,” Perry said in a telephone interview with The Dallas Morning News. “If someone stands up and says, ‘This is an expansion of gambling,’ that is an erroneous statement. It’s not. This is a regulation of something that’s going on, and it’s not going to go away.” Texas is surrounded on almost all sides by states with legalized casino gambling and sports betting, and the massive Winstar Ca- sino in Oklahoma is less than an hour from Dallasites. Bettors in Houston can catch a destination-less cruise off the coast of Galveston and gamble their hearts out on international waters. New Mexico has casi- nos too. Texans are spending their money on gambling; the state just isn’t reaping any of the benefits. “Dallas taking a position of ‘no casinos whatsoever’ is not going to stop [betting] from occurring,” West said. The state has used gambling to claw itself out of eco- nomic hardship before, and the potential revenue is hard to ignore. While critics say legalizing the vice is a one-way ticket to hell, and there is a risk of more crime and addiction, there have been undeniable successes for gambling in many cities. For Dallas, that could easily mean finally escaping the pension hole, avoiding quota-inspired lawsuits from Dallas HERO, and keeping the city safe. John Miller, who was ap- pointed as the chief of the Biloxi Police Department in 2009 after 19 years on the force, started as a patrolman in the city before the casinos moved in. “It took several years before we really felt any type of change in crime,” Miller said to Global Gaming Business Magazine. “And I don’t think we ever felt it because we’d al- ready prepared for it. We had hired more patrolmen, bought better equipment, and we kind of absorbed it. We never had that really big crime wave, the big boom that some people thought. Instead, what we ended up with was better law en- forcement.” Alex Wong/Getty Images Global gambling magnates Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam Adelson purchased the Mavs. They own Las Vegas Sands Corp., the third-largest casino company in the world.
