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DOES BENNETT? The
popular author, lecturer and Republican Party activist speaks out, often
indignantly, about almost every moral issue except one—gambling. It’s not
hard to see why. According to casino documents, Bennett is a “preferred
customer” in at least four venues in Atlantic City and Las Vegas, betting
millions of dollars over the last decade. His games of choice: video poker
and slot machines, some at $500 a pull. With a revolving line of credit of
at least $200,000 at each casino, Bennett, former drug czar and secretary
of Education under Presidents Reagan and Bush, doesn’t have to bring money
when he shows up at a casino.
More than 40
pages of internal casino documents provided to The Washington Monthly and
NEWSWEEK paint a picture of a gambler given the high-roller treatment,
including limos and tens of thousands of dollars in complimentary hotel
rooms and other amenities. In one two-month period, the documents show him
wiring more than $1.4 million to cover losses at one casino. In one
18-month stretch, Bennett visited a number of casinos for two or three
days at a time. And Bennett must have worried about news of his habit
leaking out. His customer profile at one casino lists an address that
corresponds to Empower.org, the Web site of Empower America, the group
Bennett cochairs. But typed across the form are the words: NO CONTACT AT
RES OR BIZ!!!
Some of Bennett’s losses have
been substantial. According to one casino source, on July 12 of last year,
Bennett lost $340,000 at Caesars in Atlantic City, and on April 5 and 6 of
2003 he lost more than $500,000 at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. Some casino
estimates put his total losses over the past decade at more than $8
million. “There’s a term in the trade for his kind of gambler,” says a
casino source who has witnessed Bennett at the high-limit slots in the wee
hours. “We call them losers.”
Reached by
NEWSWEEK, Bennett acknowledged he gambles but not that he has ended up
behind. “Over 10 years, I’d say I’ve come out pretty close to even,”
Bennett says, though he wouldn’t discuss any specific figures. “You can
roll up and down a lot in one day, as we have on many occasions,” Bennett
explains. “You may cycle several hundred thousand dollars in an evening
and net out only a few thousand.”
But
during the 18-month period, the documents show, there were only a few
occasions when Bennett turned in chips—worth about $30,000 or $40,000—at
the end of an evening. Most of the time, he drew down his line of credit,
often substantially. A casino source, hearing of Bennett’s claim to
breaking even on slots over 10 years, just laughed..gif)
 The Washington Monthly's Story on
Bennett
“I play fairly high
stakes. I adhere to the law. I don’t play the ‘milk money.’ I don’t put my
family at risk, and I don’t owe anyone anything,” Bennett says. The
documents do not contradict those points.
Bennett, who earns more than $50,000 per speaking engagement and
made several hundred thousand dollars in publishing advances for the more
recent of his 11 books, says “I’ve made a lot of money and I’ve won a lot
of money. When I win, I usually give at least a chunk of it away [to
charity]. I report everything to the IRS.”
“You don’t see what I walk away with,” Bennett says. “They [the casinos]
don’t want you to see it.”
Bennett says he
plays slot machines and video poker for privacy. “I’ve been a machine
person,” he says. “When I go to the tables, people talk—and they want to
talk about politics. I don’t want that. I do this for three hours to
relax.”
He has made no secret of his
gambling, Bennett adds. He says he was in Las Vegas in April for dinner
with the former governor of Nevada and gambled while he was there. “I’ve
gambled all my life, and it’s never been a moral issue with me. I liked
church bingo when I was growing up. I’ve been a poker player.” He says
that after a recent speech in Rochester, he was asked whether he would run
for president in 2008 and answered that he might enter the World Series of
Poker instead.
Bennett has long been known
to be part of a small-stakes poker game in Washington with Chief Justice
William Rehnquist, Associate Justice Antonin Scalia and lawyer Robert
Bork. But his high-stakes gaming comes as a surprise to many friends. “We
knew he went out there [to Las Vegas] sometimes, but at that level? Wow!”
says one longtime associate.
Bennett and his
organization, Empower America, oppose the extension of casino gambling in
the states. In a recent editorial, his Empower America cochair, Jack Kemp,
inveighed against lawmakers who “pollute our society with a slot machine
on every corner.” The group recently published an “Index of Leading
Cultural Indicators” that reports 5.5 million American adults as “problem”
or “pathological” gamblers. Bennett says he has his gambling under
control.
When reminded of studies that link
heavy gambling to divorce, bankruptcy, domestic abuse and other family
problems he has widely decried, Bennett compared the situation to alcohol.
“I view it as drinking,” Bennett says. “If you can’t handle it, don’t do
it.”
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Fineman: The Long
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