Wednesday, 10 May, 1pm
There’s a Senate General Government & Accountability Committee working meeting scheduled this week at 1pm (900 Court St NE, Salem). You can send a letter for consideration in the exhibits through the committee’s meeting information page. Both Portland Meadows and Final Table will be closed for the day, with play8ers carpooling from both locations and a bus planned for transporting supporters of #SaveOregonPoker to the meeting (contact Portland Meadows about seat availability).
The 2015 #SAVEOREGONPOKER Bill
(4) “Casino game” means any of the traditional gambling-based games commonly known as dice, faro, monte, roulette, fan-tan, twenty-one, blackjack, Texas hold-’em, seven-and-a-half, big injun, klondike, craps, poker, chuck-a-luck, Chinese chuck-a-luck (dai shu), wheel of fortune, chemin de fer, baccarat, pai gow, beat the banker, panquinqui, red dog, acey-deucey, or any other gambling-based game similar in form or content.
“Chinese chuck-a-luck?” “Big injun?” Seriously? It’s 2017, folks, even degenerate poker players don’t use “injun.”
Oregon Legislative Information
State of Oregon 2017 HB2190 tracking page
- Direct link to text of the bill
- Letters for and against the bill
- Third reading, discussion, and vote in the Oregon House (27 April 2017)
Oregonlive.com HB2190 tracking page
Committee Meeting Attended by La Center Lobbyist
During the House Committee on Business and Labor meeting on 17 April, Eugene representative Julie Fahey asked a question clarifying the status of fund-raiser operators. At first, nobody seemed ready to answer it, but a lobbyist for the Last Frontier Casino made her way to the front to mollify concerns.
Map of House Vote on 27 April
Senatorial districts encompass two House districts and are organized by number. House districts 1 and 2 are in Senate district 1, House districts 3 and 4 are in Senate district 2, etc,
Almost all of the representatives in the Portland are voted for the bill to restrict poker. House Speaker Tina Kotek represents the district where Portland Meadows is sited and Diego Hernandez has Final Table’s district. Both voted for the bill. Rob Nosse has inner SE Portland, with Claudia’s and Aces Full. He voted for it. Ann Lininger represents The Game’s district; she was practically the only legislator in the metro area to oppose the measure. State Senator Lew Frederick‘s district covers most of North Portland, including the horse-racing facility; both of the House members in his domain voted for the bill. The same goes for east Portland Senators Rod Monroe (Final Table) and Kathleen Taylor (Aces Full and Claudia’s). The vote in southwest Portland Senator Richard Devlin‘s district was split between Lininger’s no vote and a House member who voted for the bill.
Nancy Nathanson of Eugene has the Beach Poker Club, High Mountain Poker Palance, Full House Poker, and The Lounge in her district, but she supported the bill. Senator James Manning, Jr. is the upper house member for Eugene’s clubs.
Both representatives in Bend—including Gene Whisant where the Bend Poker Room is situated—voted for the bill. Tim Knopp is the senator for the area.
Even Medford was not spared. Representative Sal Esquivel voted for HB2190, despite having Medford Poker Room in his district, as did the other area rep. Alan DeBoer is the Senator for the area.
Only three of the nine House members in the state representing districts with social poker rooms (at least those showing in PokerAtlas) voted against the bill to shut them down. Those that opposed the bill were Andy Olson (Albany), Carl Wilson (Grants Pass), and Cedric Hayden (with Sutherlin and The Club House in his district).
The next step in the chain in writing state senators. There are 30 of them in the state of Oregon. By my count, Eleven of them are in districts where both representatives voted for the bill. Four of five abstentions were in senate districts where the other representative voted for the bill, one was in a district with a yea. Twelve senate districts had votes split. The last two (both in southeast Oregon) were the only ones in which both House members voted against HB2190.
Party Breakdown
The House vote on HB2190 was 39 yea, 16 nay, and 5 not voting. The Oregonian had the vote recorded as 41-14-5, but they not only mistakenly put Representative David Brock Smith of Gold Beach in the yea column, but they recorded a yea for Representative Vic Gilliam, despite the fact that Gilliam resigned in January die to a serious health issue, and his replacement, Rick Lewis of Silverton, voted nay.
The final tally is
- YES (39): 28 Democrats and 11 Republicans
- NO (16): 7 Democrats and 9 Republicans
- NO VOTE (5): 2 Democrats and 3 Republicans
The Senate has 17 Democrats and 13 Republicans.
Other Pages
Save Oregon Poker (Facebook group)
Bend Poker Room Fight for Poker
Richmond (BC) shuts down senior’s small stakes poker game
Because I Can
I was wondering what the heck “Chinese chuck-a-luck” was, so I Googled it and discovered a bill with practically identical language as HB2190 introduced in the Vermont legislature this year. Then I saw the same text in a 25-year-old agreement between the Choctaw Band and the State of Mississippi. It probably goes way back to when “big injun” was a thing. Or maybe not.
