When Congressman Bob Goodlatte introduced his anti-gaming legislation in
February, he sent a letter to his Republican colleagues in the House of
Representatives with a stark message: This is the bill Jack Abramoff does
not want you to sign. Mr Goodlatte’s invocation of Mr Abramoff, the once
powerful Republican lobbyist who was engulfed at the time in a wide-ranging
lobbying scandal and who has since pled guilty to corruption charges,
re-invigorated the criticisms of online gambling, says one Washington
lobbyist. and nothing was going on until Jack pled out and admitted to
things in respect to 2000,” the lobbyist says, referring to Mr Abramoff’s
successful lobbying campaign against an earlier version of Mr Goodlatte’s
bill on behalf of eLottery, a client. Ultimately, lawmakers who wanted to
prove their independence from Mr Abramoff’s biggest cause in Washington,
gambling, paved the way for the passage of the Unlawful Enforcement Gambling
Act.
But other forces allowed the bill, which had been passed in the House but
which was not expected to gain traction in the Senate, to be attached to an
unrelated port security bill and passed hours before lawmakers left
Washington to campaign ahead of November’s mid-term elections. At the centre
of those efforts was Senate majority leader Bill Frist, who had sought to
attach the bill to defence legislation only to be rebuffed by Senator John
Warner, chairman of the armed services committee. Lobbyists who followed the
progress of the bill say Dr Frist wanted to attach the bill to legislation
guaranteed to pass for a number of reasons, including the fact its passage
would sit well with conservative voters ahead of his expected run for
president in 2008. Dr Frist may have pushed for the bill, observers say, in
the hope it would generate support from fellow lawmaker Jim Leach, an Iowa
Republican and critic of online gambling, whose support could be crucial for
the Tennessee Republican’s presidential bid in the important Iowa primary.

Leading the corporate lobbying effort in support of the bill – and in
opposition to the efforts of UK companies such as SportingBet and
Partygaming – was the National Football League, which said it wanted to
crack down on sports betting because it hurts the integrity and perception
of football in America. Public records show the NFL has spent more than $3m
on lobbying since 1998. Last year, it paid one Washington company, Covington
& Burling, $700,000 to lobby on gambling and other issues. Two of its
lobbyists, Martin Gold and Bill Wichterman, are former senior aides to Dr
Frist.

While lobbyists hired by Sportingbet and Partygaming believed passage of the
bill was a long shot, the US Chamber of Commerce, another powerful lobbying
group, argued passage of the legislation would create a regulatory burden on
financial institutions that will now be charged with scrutinising
transactions to see if they are gambling-related.

But the pleading of the US Chamber was ignored. One day before Saturday’s
vote on the legislation, two lobbyists who followed the bill alleged the
last-minute intervention of the White House, which encouraged Republican
senators to support the legislation, gave the bill the momentum it needed to
be attached to the port security bill and passed by the Senate.

Both lobbyists contend the White House sought passage of the bill following
the release of a bipartisan congressional report that documented contacts
between the White House and Mr Abramoff and his partners, including contacts
between the lobbyist and Karl Rove, chief political strategist for George
W.Bush,president.

“What put it over the top is when the White House, in response to the
Abramoff story, said we need this in the ports bill,” one of the lobbyist
says.