Fair Play For Arkansas—2022 (Fair Play) had to accomplish two things in order to get their initiative to remove Pope County’s casino from Amendment 100 onto the Arkansas 2022 general election ballot.
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- They had to provide an initiative with a ballot title and popular name that would satisfy the Arkansas Board of Election Commissioners, and
- had to have enough signatures.
I attended the meeting at the state capitol where the commissioners considered Fair Play For Arkansas—2022’s ballot title and popular name. Their case was presented by a very capable lawyer from a prestigious Little Rock firm and one of the members of Fair Play’s group. The lawyer’s presentation was embarrassingly weak, rightfully so, as the ballot title and popular name did not accurately reflect what the enacted initiative would have done.
Dustin McDaniel, former Arkansas Attorney General, represented Cherokee Nation Businesses, the holder of the casino license, and explained how the initiative would not accomplish what the ballot title and popular name said it would do.
The commissioners voted to reject the ballot title and popular name.
Fair Play also failed on the signature aspect. They had to get 89,151 valid signatures from registered Arkansas voters. If they didn’t get that but got at least 70%, they would have a 30-day “cure period” to obtain more signatures. Even though they submitted petitions with over 100,000 signatures, they didn’t have enough valid signatures to enter the cure period.
Fair Play spent $3,936,021.45 on the efforts to get it on the ballot. Most of that was paid to a canvassing company out of Colorado who, it has been alleged, hired unqualified canvassers and used unethical practices to get petition signatures. They were opposed by another organization, Arkansas Tourism Alliance, that very successfully opposed the canvassing campaign and exposed much of what the ballot canvassers had done.
Fair Play received $4,140,827.98 in contributions with Choctaw Gaming in Oklahoma contributing $4,133,527.
The unspent balance is $204,806.53.
In a related legal case, Choctaw has claimed that their fight against a casino was because they stand to lose $12M a year because of the Pope County casino’s proximity to their Pocola casino. It’s 92 miles by road between the two sites.1
That’s ironic since Choctaw was one of the five applicants in the May 2019 application period and has tried to get its foot in the door several times since.
I’ve been told that they weren’t just mad about not being able to get the license, they were pissed!
I think they are sore losers because they weren’t able to successfully compete for the casino license, and, like an unsuccessful suitor, are trying to spoil it for those who did get the license.
- It’s 13.3 miles between the Pocola Choctaw casino and the Roland Cherokee casino and 84 miles between Pocola and the Cherokee casino in West Siloam Springs. Casinos have competitors. The spacing of the four casinos in Arkansas is intended to minimize the adverse effect of casinos being in close proximity.