For the last several years, House Speaker Jason White has been fiercely advocating for Mississippi to make it easier for gamblers to bet on sports. He and other supporters of mobile sports betting have claimed that the state is losing out on a bundle of tax revenue — an estimated $40 million to $80 million a year — by restricting sports betting to the sportsbooks located inside the state’s casinos.
For three years in a row, though, the Senate has blocked the House legislation, either because the casino industry didn’t want the competition from DraftKings, FanDuel and others in the lucrative online gaming industry, or because of worries that online betting will lead to greater levels of gambling addiction, particularly among young men.
The Senate’s resistance reportedly got so under White’s skin this year that several gaming-related bills that originated in the Senate were killed in retaliation in the House. One that particularly had merit would have allowed the state Department of Human Services to garnish gambling winnings from parents who aren’t paying their court-ordered child support.
Now comes a story from Mississippi Today that suggests White is keen on online sports betting not only as another source of state revenue. He also has become a buddy of the industry, which treated him, his communications director, two House staff members and at least a couple of spouses to a big weekend in New Orleans during this past year’s Super Bowl — America’s premier and most expensive sporting event.
How much of the weekend’s tab was picked up by DraftKings and the Sports Betting Alliance, a trade organization of the online sports industry, is uncertain. Mississippi’s lax lobbying laws do not require the benefactors to report on their gifts to public officials until the end of the year. DraftKings and a Jackson-based lobbying firm that represents the Sports Betting Alliance, however, confirmed to Mississippi Today that the gambling industry paid for their guest Super Bowl tickets — worth at least a few thousand dollars apiece.
White should not be accepting freebies like that, and he should be discouraging those who work for him or the House from accepting them, too. The gifts come across as financial rewards for doing the bidding of a special interest.
If anything, White should be championing reforms that would make such gifts illegal, or at least severely restricted to no more than a token amount. No politician is likely to be swayed much by a free steak dinner. But entrée into the biggest sporting event in the nation, now that might turn a few heads, or a few votes.
