Mitt and the Indians: How would a Romney presidency affect the Wampanoag's casino dreams?
Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts
Gov. Mitt Romney campaigns in Las Vegas, Friday.
AP Photo/Charles Dharapak
When he was the newly elected governor of Massachusetts in 2003, Mitt Romney had an idea to recoup money going out of state to Indian casinos in Connecticut.
He offered a deal to Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun: Pay the state of Massachusetts $80 million, and he would make no attempts to legalize casinos and slot parlors in the Bay State; don’t pay the money and he would work to legalize video lottery terminals at the state’s race tracks, essentially turning places such as Raynham Park into racinos.
It was pretty much an extortion ploy: ‘You make payments, and we’ll legally agree not to have casinos in Massachusetts. We’ll guarantee you a monopoly,’” said Clyde Barrow, a casino expert and director of the Center for Policy Analysis at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.
Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun, which were flying high at the top of their casino games at the time, called Romney’s bluff and refused to pay. Romney never followed through on his threat to allow slots at the tracks.
Whether Romney’s plan would have withstood legal challenges is open to speculation. Federal law allows federally recognized Indian tribes to offer the same types of state-legalized gambling on reservation land.
Now that Massachusetts has legalized casinos and the Mashpee Wampanoag are on the federal government’s doorstep with a plan to open a tribal casino: What would a Romney presidency mean to that plan for a $500 million Indian casino in Taunton? Would Romney, the former governor, help push the project along or would he follow the lead of the Bush administration that, at times, showed open hostility toward the proliferation of tribal casinos, especially those in areas far away from the tribe’s reservation, according to experts.
The Romney campaign did not return repeated emails and phone calls seeking comment.
“I don’t know much about how Romney would be,” Cedric Cromwell, chairman of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Council, said Thursday. “He hasn’t come out with anything specific in his platform about what he would do for tribes.”
On the other hand, Cromwell praised the Obama administration, saying the president’s leadership has been “amazing and powerful.” The tribe has received grants for its health program and government center, and the president has personally pushed for a fix to the Supreme Court’s 2009 “Carcieri decision,” which left lingering questions about the authority of the Interior Department to take land into trust for tribes recognized after 1934.
The only hint that tribe issues are on Romney’s radar screen is a report on the Indian Country Today website about a fundraiser he held in August in Boston with tribal leaders. The report doesn’t indicate who was at the event, but quotes a Romney-Ryan adviser on Indian issues.
“I thought the meeting was very positive,” John Tahsuda, a tribal lobbyist with Navigators Global, told the publication. “Governor Romney spent quality time with the tribal leaders, engaging in a real give-and-take discussion. He expressed his understanding and support of tribes’ inherent sovereignty.
He also expressed his support for and desire to strengthen the federal policy of self-governance.”
Tahsuda did not return repeated calls to his Washington, D.C., firm seeking further comment.
Philip Baker-Shenk, a partner with Holland & Knight, a law firm that works with tribes and states on Indian issues, was at the fundraiser, too.
“I have every confidence that the Romney/Ryan administration would follow in the footsteps of the Nixon administration, the Reagan administration and the Bush administrations and continue government-to-government relationships with tribes in Massachusetts,” he said in a brief interview.
Holland & Knight is one of the firms hired by Massachusetts to help negotiate a compact with the Mashpee Wampanoag and is now lobbying on behalf of the state for federal approval of the tribe’s land-in-trust application as part of that deal.
Cromwell said he wasn’t invited to the Romney fundraiser in Boston and wasn’t even aware that it happened.
Exactly what a Romney administration might mean for Indian country, in general, and the Mashpee Wampanoag, in particular, will come down to whom he would put in charge as secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Matthew Fletcher, director of the Indigenous Law & Policy Center at Michigan State University, said.
Bush didn’t have an assistant secretary in charge at the bureau for six years and the Interior Department was “openly harsh” toward tribes, Fletcher said.
Most Indian experts agree that the Obama administration has been more respectful of tribes’ sovereign rights and open to tribe issues, with Fletcher calling the president “exceptional” on Interior-related issues. That’s why some tribes, as they did when President Clinton was leaving office, are attempting to get the Interior Department to act on outstanding issues before the upcoming presidential election. There could even be a flurry of activity should Obama become a lame duck, Fletcher said.
Even that’s no guarantee. Two tribes that were granted federal recognition in the final days of the Clinton administration saw those decisions reversed under Bush, Fletcher said.
Dennis Whittlesey, a Washington, D.C., attorney who represents tribes across the country, said some are trying to push projects along under the more tribe-friendly Obama administration and to avoid the uncertainty a Romney presidency would bring.
“He’s not made any public statements about Indian matters,” Whittlesey said of Romney.
“Historically, Republicans have not been as friendly toward Indian affairs as Democrats. If past is prologue, it will not be as friendly an environment for tribes under a Romney administration as it has been under Obama.”
Gov. Deval Patrick is openly lobbying for the Mashpee Wampanoag’s casino plans in the deal he struck with the tribe for payments of 21.5 percent of gross gambling revenue from the Taunton project.
The Mashpee Wampanoag tribe has filed its application for land in trust, and the state and tribe have submitted the compact for approval by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. That decision could come around the same time as Election Day. The tribe’s application to have 170 acres in Mashpee and 146 acres in Taunton taken into trust is more complicated and could take months, if not years.
“I would say, if they don’t have a decision done by the end of this year and we have a new administration, things will be put on hold for a while,” Whittlesey said.
Steven Light, co-director of the Institute for the Study of Tribal Gaming Law and Policy at the University of North Dakota, said Romney respects states’ rights as a “tenant of conservatism” and that could translate into respect for the deal reached between Patrick and the tribe.
“Romney’s experience as a Massachusetts governor and his interest in state sovereignty would weigh in favor of determinations made by the Patrick administration and all the folks in Massachusetts,” he said.
In 2010, John McCain, the Republican nominee, was considered someone who would be supportive of sovereign rights and self-determination for Indian tribes, Light said. But McCain was also critical of off-reservation tribal casinos, he said.
The Obama administration has proven to be supportive of tribal self-governance, but movement has been slow – “more incremental than transformative” – in easing some of the regulations imposed by the Bush administration, Light said.
All of the experts caution that it’s pure speculation what a President Romney would mean to Indian Country and the Mashpee Wampanoag.
“It’s hard to really know, but the fact is that Democrats like Obama have been more favorably inclined to Indian tribes on land in trust,” Barrow said.
That would seem to make the Mashpee Wampanoag better off rooting for four more years of Obama than the unknown of Romney.
“No doubt about it,” Barrow said.
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