At least $11,279,327 -- Includes 1996 ballot initiative spending

• Search Ohio "Yes on Issue 1" gambling contributions from 1996

June 9, 1997

With its lotteries, pari-mutuel horse tracks, and legalized off-track betting (no parlors have opened yet), the Buckeye State offers plenty of gambling opportunities already, but the smell of easy money -- yours -- lured gambling developers to spend millions last year in a brash attempt to amend the state constitution to allow eight riverboat casinos. In the end, the investors, including local developer Alan Spitzer and gambling impresario Eddie DeBartolo Jr., badly overplayed their hand. A coalition of activists that included PTAs, CEOs, and Gov. George Voinovich rallied against the casinos, and when the riverboat amendment -- known as State Issue 1 -- shoved off at the ballot box, Ohio voters sank it by one million votes.

Ohio keeps campaign finance reports on paper and computer disk, charging $5 per reporting period (four per year in an election year) for the disk version. Lobbying reports are only on paper. A search of the Ohio Secretary of State's data revealed that riverboat backers spent more than $11 million on the failed Yes on Issue 1 campaign; we present them here in the form of a searchable database.

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