A scant two years ago, New Jersey voters overwhelmingly rejected legalizing casino gambling anywhere in their state (including Atlantic City) by a 500,000-vote margin out of more than 3 million votes cast. Last month, those same voters, by a 300,000-vote margin out of more than 3 million votes cast, overwhelmingly approved legalizing casino gambling for Atlantic City in South Jersey. 

It was virtually the same proposition though ostensibly limited to the environs of Atlantic City. The 1976 proposal, like the 1974, was presented to the same electorate amidst remarkably similar economic and social conditions at the time: a depressed state economy and high unemployment.  

So why the Big Switch in a short two years? And what are its implications for other neighboring eastern states? The last question first:

Operating casinos in Atlantic City (now expected as early as March of next year) are certain to hasten legalizing legislation in other states and elsewhere in New Jersey—to "meet the competition" and supposedly to create new jobs and tourist dollars: the same argument Jersey proponents used to break the Las Vegas monopoly. "Why should we see our people go there to gamble?" 

In New York State, two legislative committees have already held extensive "grass-roots" educational hearings on the issue. Governor Hugh Carey, the Democratic Speaker of the Assembly and New York City's Mayor Abraham Beanie are publicly for a casino-gambling referendum. (Like New Jersey and most other states that suffered from the gambling scandals of the mid-1800's, the New York ban on assorted gambling is locked into the state constitution and can only be changed by referendum vote of the people.) The "glamor" of casino gambling will be pitched hard to solve the economic and tourism problems of Manhattan's Times Square, the Catskills Resorts and Long Island beach communities, only 150 miles from Atlantic City. 

In New Hampshire, the largest newspaper and the only statewide daily, William Loeb's Manchester Union-Leader, along with his newly-reelected Governor Meldrin Thompson, are now beating the drums harder than ever for legalized casinos—using much the same arguments and eying the potential high rollers from nearby Boston's metropolitan area. 

In Connecticut, much the same forces which recently brought exotic jai alai betting north to Bridgeport and Hartford are pushing casino gamblng, and now with added arguments from the overwhelming New Jersey vote. ("If New Jersey, why not us?") 

And in Florida, a hoped-for replay of the good ol' days of wide-open (though illegal) casino gambling in the Miami Beach area, which really spawned the later big operators of Las Vegas, Havana and more recently the Bahamas gambling halls. Earlier this year the push to put the measure on the ballot by initiative petition (over the objections of Florida's Governor Askew and the State Attorney General) was aborted near the deadline when the Secretary of State of like mind threw out on technicalities 80,000 of the mere 210,000 signatures required by Florida law for initiating proposals via the ballot. But the proposition has not been beaten, only delayed. 

Basically the same coalitions in opposing and proposing casino gambling as in 1974 squared off for the 1976 referendum under much the same conditions—but with one important difference between them: The pro-casino proponents learned from their mistakes of the past campaign and corrected them. The anti-casino opponents did not and stood pat. The proponents raised and spent more than twice as much campaign funds as in 1974 ($1-million-plus vis a vis $500,000), and spent it more effectively. No more quarter-million-dollar simplistic "Vote Yes" billboards throughout the state; instead, media communications, early-behind-the-scenes persuasion of opinion-leader groups, and real get-out-the-vote politicking onto election day. 

The proponents' committee reached outside the state for all the professional help and funds it could get to get its message across, and retained an experienced $10,000-a-month campaign organizer from California to coordinate fund-raising and campaign strategy rather than risk repeating the amateur night which defeated them in 1974. A great many New Jersey voters were clearly convinced by the economic, "create jobs" argument. 

The opponents' committee, on the other hand, knowing all this, became even more parochial than in 1974, opting for a campaign mostly of church bulletins and mailings to inspire a grass-roots uprising of protest, which unfortunately fell virtually a million-votes short of the winning 500,000-vote margin which had been obtained in 1974. No systematic fund-raising was attempted, no arm-twisting solicitations of fat-cat churchgoing parishioners, and little business and professional support was reached for—and hence, no professional organizers were engaged from within or outside the state because they were deemed not needed. 

The organized casino opposition became mainly a church-oriented opposition, which, along with some elected officials, voiced opposition mostly in moral-corruption terms rather than credibly countering the more-business-more-jobs arguments of casino proponents with independent or non-aligned business or professional spokesmen of their own. (As it was, the opposition's most effective spokesman was himself a government official-U.S. Attorney Jonathan Goldstein.) 

By a week before referendum day, the New Jersey Council of Churches committee had planned for all it felt was needed to win again: its $15,000 printing and mailing budget considered more than adequate to match the proponents' $700,000 media budget in a modern-day miracle of loaves and fishes that would multiply votes against casinos. The miracle never happened. The winning votes never came forth. The issue of casino gambling was lost not by an inherent weakness in the issue itself but in the organization and communication of it. 

Behind the Scenes 

That's how the victory for gambling was won. But what many people do not know is one of the major reasons behind the push for casinos. Illegal, "dirty" money generated from a variety of unlawful pursuits needs to be cleaned up or "laundered" and diverted from federal law enforcement scrutiny before it can be further useful to the Mob. The unaccountability, untraceability of cash money used in casinos—unlike the numbered tickets in state lotteries, horse betting, etc.—makes them ideal for the laundering operations. "If there weren't a Las Vegas, we'd have had to invent it—and maybe we did," one of the casino owners has candidly stated. The dirty money from elsewhere—called "damp and moldy" in the jargon of the trade—is couriered into Las Vegas to be dry-cleaned. There it is deliberately gambled away and "lost" over the gaming tables—and in the cash-play process loses its trace-ability (no check, no marker, no accounting tag on casino cash). A short time later it is handed back to the "loser" as cleaned up cash from the "skim" of the winnings counted in counting-house privacy, away from prying eyes. 

It can work the other way too. Author Peter Wyden writes in the Saturday Evening Post: ". . . millions of untaxed dollars made by narcotic peddlers and other criminals around the country come to Las Vegas to be 'won' at the gambling tables. That way the money can be reported to the Internal Revenue Service as 'gambling winnings'." 

Ed Reid and Ovid Demaris in their best-selling book on Vegas—The Green Felt Jungle—have a perceptive paragraph about the political-money laundering operation: 

"Gambling is a hard-cash business. There are no Revenue men in the counting room at the end of each shift when the 'drop boxes' beneath the tables are brought in for the count. And even if the Revenue men could manage to get into the counting room three times a day in all the casinos in Nevada, the gamblers would have a dozen other cheating tricks left that would make a straight count impossible. They could overstate the 'fill slip'—slips of paper which show amounts of money brought to the table—or overstate the amounts lost to shills (and keep the earnings), or hand out a large sum to a confederate." 

Hank Messick, in the latest of his dozen-or-so books on organized crime, The Only Game in Town, An Illustrated History of Gambling, writes: 

"The counting room is locked until the end of another shift when once again the drop boxes will be removed from beneath the gaming tables and brought in for an accounting. 

"End of story? Not quite. For, mysteriously, thousands of dollars brought to the counting room in the locked drop boxes never make it to the cashier's office in the currency separator. Somehow, the money vanishes. The process is known as 'skimming' and it can add up to as much as $4 million a year from a single casino. 

"One doesn't have to account for 'skimmed' money. No taxes are paid on it, and there is no need to explain why large hunks of it go to men who are not owners of record of the casino. In short, skimmed funds represent the real profits of a legal casino-the cream off the top." 

The "bank"—the Vegas casinos—is where the mobsters send their illegally-gotten funds from the big-state and big-city rackets to be systematically laundered into clean cash money (and untraceable)—and forthwith returned in part to the big states and cities for continuing bribes, payoffs and contributions to politicians. 

The Vegas transactions may have gotten too heavy, the attention too intense, so the political pressure is on the pliant politicians for help in setting up some casino bank branches in the East, but for the same money-laundering, crime-convenience purposes as Vegas serves to excess. In New Jersey the verdict is in. Will voters in other states prove as compliant?