Casinos and gambling have been on the minds of presidential candidates at several key moments during the 2016 campaign.
Even when not debating at a big Las Vegas casino-resort, which Republican contenders will do Tuesday night, gambling references have worked their way into the campaign rhetoric multiple times. And there’s evidence that such moments matter, particularly to Nevada voters.
The American Gaming Association touted a poll Monday indicating that 80 percent of Nevada gaming employees were more likely to vote for a candidate who supports their industry. The results of the poll, based on 320 interviews, also suggested that most workers in the state gaming industry are closely following the race and plan to vote next year.
Workers favored Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, who were seen as understanding the gaming industry better than any of the other candidates. The poll prompted the association’s president, Geoff Freeman, to call gaming employees “an electoral force to be reckoned with” in Nevada.
Much of that force will no doubt be paying close attention to Tuesday’s debate at the Venetian, and there are many reasons to think that gaming may once again come up there.
One big reason is past experience — it’s happened before. Accordingly, here’s a look back at five of the most notable public references to gambling or casinos in the 2016 campaign.
1. Atlantic City, Donald Trump and Caesars
The candidate most closely tied to casinos is the one currently dominating the Republican field: Donald Trump.
Trump’s business record has been the subject of criticism in past debates, much of which focused on four bankruptcies at businesses bearing his name.
At the Aug. 6 debate in Cleveland, for example, Fox News moderator Chris Wallace asked Trump about four bankruptcies filed by companies affiliated with him. Trump responded that he had “used the laws of this country just like the greatest people that you read about every day in business” and stressed that he had never gone bankrupt personally.
Wallace then homed in on the 2009 bankruptcy of casino company Trump Entertainment Resorts Inc. Trump, who stepped down from the company’s board just before the bankruptcy filing, was quick to downplay the situation.
After Wallace noted the sizable losses endured by lenders to the company, Trump characterized the lenders as “total killers” and “not the nice, sweet little people that you think.” He then referenced the fact that a major subsidiary of Caesars Entertainment Corp., which operates multiple Atlantic City casinos, filed for bankruptcy earlier this year. Trump said he had the “good sense” to get out of struggling Atlantic City years ago.
The issue came up again at the Sept. 16 debate in Southern California. That time, Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard chief executive, said many voters were concerned about the national debt because “politicians have run up mountains of debt using other people’s money.”
“That is, in fact, precisely the way you ran your casinos,” Fiorina said to Trump. Referencing the four bankruptcies, she called into question Trump’s ability to manage the nation’s finances.
Trump’s response was substantively similar to what he said in August. He called Atlantic City a “disaster” and pointed to the Caesars bankruptcy.
“I did great in Atlantic City. I knew when to get out,” Trump said. “My timing was great. And I got a lot of credit for it.”
A similar situation played out at the Oct. 28 debate in Boulder, Colo. Moderator Becky Quick called bankruptcy “a broken promise” and asked why voters should believe Trump’s campaign promises given the struggles of his Atlantic City casinos. Trump responded that Atlantic City “has gone bad,” invoked the Caesars bankruptcy and said he had used the country’s laws to his benefit.
For more about Trump and bankruptcy, read this.
2. Jeb Bush, Trump and Florida gambling
At the September debate, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper whether he was a “puppet” for his donors. Bush said he was not and tried to explain that he had a “proven record of conservative leadership.”
Then he lambasted Trump about gambling.
“The one guy that had some special interests that I know of that tried to get me to change my views on something — that was generous and gave me money — was Donald Trump,” Bush said.
Bush said he shot down Trump’s desire for casino gambling in Florida, immediately prompting a tense exchange between the two rivals, with Trump contending that the claims about his involvement in Florida were “totally false.”
“I promise if I wanted it, I would have gotten it,” Trump insisted.
They didn’t debate the point in too much detail, but it’s worth noting that Politifact ruled Bush’s claim “mostly true.”
3. “Casino capitalism” in the Democratic debate
No one on the Democratic side has as much experience with casinos as Trump, so there’s not as much material for the candidates to debate over. But that didn’t stop Democratic candidates from referencing casinos in another way when they debated at the Wynn Las Vegas resort on Oct. 13.
CNN moderator Anderson Cooper asked Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders whether he considered himself a capitalist, and his response likely made some gaming industry employees bristle at the negative comparison.
“Do I consider myself part of the casino capitalist process by which so few have so much and so many have so little by which Wall Street’s greed and recklessness wrecked this economy? No, I don’t,” Sanders said.
Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley made a similar point later in the debate, during a discussion about income inequality. O’Malley aligned himself with much of Sanders’ views on the subject and added that “we need to separate the casino, speculative, mega-bank gambling that we have to insure with our money, from the commercial banking.”
4. Daily fantasy sports
At the October Republican debate, Jeb Bush weighed in on a highly controversial subject related to the casino industry: daily fantasy sports.
Not long after Nevada regulators said daily fantasy was a form of gambling, CNBC moderator Carl Quintanilla essentially asked Bush if he agreed with that assessment. Does daily fantasy meet the definition of gambling, Quintanilla asked, and should the federal government treat it that way?
Bush seemed to think that daily fantasy was not gambling, but not immune from regulation, either.
“Effectively, it is day trading without any regulation at all,” he said. “And when you have insider information, which apparently has been the case, where people use that information and use big data to try to take advantage of it, there has to be some regulation.”
Then New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie jumped in.
“Carl, are we really talking about getting government involved in fantasy football?” he asked the moderator, eliciting laughter. “We have $19 trillion in debt. We have people out of work. We have ISIS and al-Qaida attacking us. And we’re talking about fantasy football? Can we stop?”
Christie said the government should stick to what it’s supposed to do, such as securing the nation’s borders and protecting its citizens.
“Enough on fantasy football,” Christie said. “Let people play, who cares?”
5. Bush just doesn’t like gambling
Away from the debate stage, another comment Bush made about gambling elicited a public response from the American Gaming Association.
During an October interview, Nevada political journalist Jon Ralston asked Bush whether he believed online gaming should be banned by the federal government.
Bush said regulating online gaming state-by-state could be “a challenge” because “there’s no boundaries in the Internet.” And he said he would consider a ban of online gaming.
“I don’t like gambling, just for the record. Is that politically incorrect in Nevada?” Bush said. He also noted that the had “fought gambling in Florida” and would “continue to do it.”
That led the gaming association to send out a statement highlighting Bush’s unfavorable stance and encouraging him to move past his opposition.
“Candidates seeking votes in Nevada shouldn’t be averse to stepping foot inside a casino because they don’t like gambling,” said Sara Rayme, the association’s senior vice president of public affairs, in the statement.” The reality is that embracing casino gaming will boost, not hurt, a candidate’s campaign.”