RaciNO voices: Gambling can drain us

CLOVIS — When the New Mexico Racing Commission comes to town for a site visit on Friday, hundreds of people dressed in yellow shirts are planning to show support.

Vision 2020 members say a Clovis race track/casino would bring “sunny” prospects for growing Clovis, including hundreds of jobs. They also project millions of dollars in economic impact for the city, mostly provided by out-of-town visitors.

Their polls, they say, show 90 percent of Clovis residents support bringing a racino to town.

But not everyone is excited about the prospects.

A group calling itself RaciNO is worried about negative social impacts that could come with gambling on horses and gaming.

Walter Bradley, former New Mexico lieutenant governor, said he got involved with RaciNO because he wants to see “quality family life” in Clovis.

Those sentiments are echoed by Jack Muse.

“We think that the studies that are done by people other than the gambling industry dictate that there is nothing family friendly about having casinos,” Muse said. “The signs on the north side of town and the south side of town say ‘Clovis: A community for family.’ If we get the casino maybe we need to take those down.”

Lonnie Leslie, chairman of the Curry County DWI Task Force, estimated the problem of intoxicated drivers would only get worse with people driving to and from a casino proposed east of town.

“I think that’s a really big issue that hasn’t been addressed at all,” Leslie said.

He also pointed to studies that say 1 percent of people become addicted gamblers and 20 percent of those people attempt suicide — meaning out of Curry and Roosevelt counties’ 50,000 residents, 500 would become addicted gamblers and 100 would try to kill themselves.

“So that 1 percent number suddenly becomes a really big number,” Leslie said.

“And what I’ve been saying when I’m speaking is that I don’t think we would want to have an arsenic melter here or a bomb factory or a fireworks factory. But I think you could actually have any of those three industries here and probably kill less people than you could with casino gambling if 100 of them are attempting suicide,” Leslie said.

Clovis City Commissioner Gary Elliott said he contacted the undersheriff in San Juan county who told Elliott that law enforcement had a virtual full-time presence at the Farmington casino due to crime.

“Lots of domestic violence, crack cocaine, methamphetamines. Also the people would spend their money, have no money for food, they would clean out the food kitchens,” Elliott said.

The group also is concerned about the economic impact the casino could have on eastern New Mexico. They say about a third of a racino’s profits would come from local residents.

“My question is, because a casino comes in, what gives this economy an extra $10 to $20 million (as proponents claim)? Our economy is whatever it is,” Muse said.

“And so where does that money come from? It comes from every merchant in town’s pocket. It comes out of every church, every civic fund. Everybody’s funds are going to dry up.”

Bradley said casinos in New Mexico are much more of a money maker for the state than the communities where they are located.

“The state gets 26 percent of the total gross and the city gets none; all the city gets is gross receipts tax off food and beverage,” Bradley said. “You’ve got all this money, hundreds of millions of dollars floating around here that the city reaps nothing out of to speak of.”

“Because they generate a lot of income, people say, ‘Oh casinos are a wonderful idea.’ Just because money is in the air doesn’t mean you get any of it,” resident Carolyn Spence said. “It’s going to drain us. I can’t understand why people think that it isn’t going to just plain be a pit into which it drains money out.”

Members of the group said they plan on sharing these same concerns with the NMRC during Friday’s public hearing, with Muse estimating they will have “somewhere between 12 and 1,200” people to speak against a racino.

The group said they have no plans to have a presence when the NMRC visits Tucumcari on Thursday, though they joked about establishing a group of Clovis citizens to promote Tucumcari as the site for a racino.