Ed McGaa is back in the news!
Everybody's favorite American Indian who lost the Green Party primary to the Blind candidate, Ray Tricomo, is back in the news, and backing non-Indian owned casinos. They want to build a casino in the Mall of America, which would probably bring tons of money to the state which is losing tons of money with our Republican Governor... Indian casinos give nothing back to the state, and make over $3-billion a year, and McGaa makes an important point, there aren't many American Indians in upper management at the casinos in Minnesota. The whole point of letting them run casinos is to give back to entire groups of people that were pushed aside in the forming of the State of Minnesota and the US. Why is there still high numbers of unemployed and homeless American Indians in the Twin Cities? Why do we grant a monopoly to a small group of people who take in huge amounts of money and don't give back to the community that they were supposed to support when they were allowed to develop casinos? For once I agree with Ed McGaa, maybe a little outside competition will get these casinos to shape up, and it will bring a lot of business to the failing disaster that is the MOA and the State of Minnesota.
Read the news story here or view the whole entry for the story.
This story was printed in PokerMag, which I have no idea is objective or not, but it mentions Ed... This is reprinted without permission.
Casino Company Has Unlikely Ally In McGaa
September 29,2003
If Park Place Entertainment hopes to build a Las Vegas-style casino at the Mall of America, one of the biggest obstacles it faces is opposition by Minnesota's Indian tribes, which have a monopoly on casino gambling in the state. At least one American Indian, though, stands ready to fight on Park Place's side in the Minnesota Legislature: Oglala Sioux author and former Green Party U.S. Senate candidate Ed McGaa.
McGaa, one of three lobbyists for Park Place, says he took the job to help Minnesota Indians. But tribal casino officials suspect that Park Place, one of the world's largest casino companies, is merely using McGaa to create infighting among Indians.
Minnesota's 11 Indian tribes have had a monopoly on casino gaming since 1989, when the state entered into a series of compacts with them. Since then, casino gambling has turned into an estimated $3 billion-per-year business for the tribes.
Non-Indians have been itching to get a piece of the action. They don't have it yet, but this year, a 6-year-old proposal to allow nontribal casino gambling at Canterbury Park racetrack in Shakopee got further than ever before at the Legislature because of pressure on representatives to find ways to erase the $4.2 billion state deficit. The state, which gets nothing from tribal casinos now, would have received a cut of the revenue from a Canterbury Park casino.
Park Place, which has not sealed a deal with the owners of the megamall, could be among many competitors seeking legislative approval next year.
Atypical Green Candidate
If any nontribal casinos are allowed in Minnesota, it is generally assumed they will cut into the tribes' revenues. "It's the concept of once it starts, it'll never stop," said John McCarthy, executive director of the Minnesota Indian Gaming Association.
"The tribes covet the fact that they have built these businesses from scratch with no subsidy from anyone. They've done such a great job, now the state says, 'oh, that works, let's take it away from the Indian tribes,' " he said.
Under the circumstances, it might seem odd for an American Indian to take up with the other side in this debate. But it's not the least bit unusual for McGaa to take an unexpected position.
When McGaa ran for the U.S. Senate as a Green last year, he was a controversial candidate. His pride in his military career - 110 combat missions in Vietnam as a Marine pilot - agitated Green activists who take the party's nonviolence platform to heart.
Strong environmentalists in the party were further outraged when the media reported McGaa had been involved in a plan in the mid-1980s to ship incinerated sewage sludge from the Twin Cities to the South Dakota reservation where he was born. There, a Nevada company planned to extract valuable metals from it.
McGaa protested that the material wasn't toxic and that the plan had won national environmental honors. But Ken Pentel, the party's candidate for governor, disavowed McGaa after the report, and a few days later, McGaa lost in the primary election.
McGaa also has a tumultuous past involving the Indian gaming industry in Minnesota. In the mid-1980s, he said he was working at Little Six Bingo in Prior Lake when he became an informant in a federal corruption case against Pan American Management, the nontribal company controlling Little Six. The Shakopee Sioux tribe took the company to court to regain control of the bingo operation.
Work Force Percentages
His current dispute with tribal casinos is different: McGaa said he believes the large tribal casinos in Minnesota are not hiring enough American Indians and grooming them for upper management positions.
"This is my main point of contention," McGaa said. "The metropolitan Indian is not being employed at these large (tribal) casinos." Park Place Entertainment officials told that the company will put American Indians in upper management.
The tribes controlling Minnesota's casinos now, however, vehemently disagree with McGaa's position on their hiring practices. McCarthy admits there are some non-Indians in management positions at the casinos but says the majority of the operations are run by tribal members.
Willie Hardacker, staff counsel for the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community, which owns Mystic Lake Casino, said 10 percent to 12 percent of the 4,500-member work force is American Indian. Perhaps, McCarthy said, Park Place Entertainment is using McGaa to blur the battle lines in the Legislature and turn American Indians against each other to take attention away from itself.
"It seems sad to me that once again Indian people are being used by corporate America to basically fight each other. I suspect that's the case with McGaa, to take the focus off of this real issue of Park Place Entertainment coming to Minnesota," he said. McGaa's response, however, was that McCarthy and Indian casino officials were taking the focus off the issue of employing Minnesota's Indians.
Commitment To Minorities
The question of whether Park Place Entertainment will make a concerted effort to hire American Indians if it opens a casino here remains. McCarthy said he believes their commitments are empty promises.
"You get all kinds of promises and commitments from these corporations about how many minorities they'll bring and they'll hire. If they were actually doing their job and following through with that, we wouldn't need to have quotas established by the government. Clearly there's more scam than there is truth," he said.
Fifty percent of Park Place's current nationwide work force is made up of minorities, and 50 percent are women, according a spokesman. But he acknowledged the company currently has no American Indians in upper management at its casinos.
If Park Place comes to the Twin Cities, Stewart said, the company would look into hiring minorities here. "We certainly are going to be committed to ensuring a diverse work force and management team if this project goes forth," he said. McGaa said he doesn't know if Park Place will be successful in its bid to open a casino in Minnesota, but he thinks the effort itself will be good for Indians here. "At least this is going to put pressure on those major casinos to start putting Indians in management," he said.
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