Who will control California gambling?

By Dan Walters

Sometimes the intermingling of art and reality is just plain spooky.

In Mid-March, two of the most important figures in California's gambling picture died within hours of one another.

Richard Milanovich, who as longtime chairman of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians played a seminal role in creating California's multibillion-dollar tribal gambling industry, died in Rancho Mirage, near his tribe's two casinos, after a long bout with cancer.

Two days later, Rod Blonien, for many years the Capitol's most important lobbyist for horse-racing tracks and poker parlors, was found dead at his home, apparently of a heart attack.

The explosive growth of tribal gambling, from a few ramshackle bingo parlors a generation ago into dozens of full-fledged resort casinos with slot machines, card tables and other wagering venues, destroyed the monopoly on legal gambling in California that Blonien's clients and others had enjoyed for decades.

One major track, Bay Meadows, shut down as patronage decreased, and others have struggled. Racing and card-room owners have openly envied the tribes' unfettered power to draw in money with slot machines, which are the single most important factor in gambling economics.

Horse tracks and poker parlors have made fitful attempts in the Legislature and via ballot to get slots themselves. But the newly enriched tribes battled them on every front and defended their slot machine hegemony, worth billions of dollars, from encroachment.

The erosion of the California horse-racing industry and its competition with the casino-owning Indian tribes is the factual underpinning for the HBO miniseries "Luck."

In "Luck," Ace Bernstein, a gambler with a shady past (played by Dustin Hoffman), gets out of prison and tries to gain control of Santa Anita, California's most storied and glamorous horse racing track. Bernstein also tries to obtain the right to add casino gambling by, it's said, bribing both Indian leaders and state legislators.

"Luck," which has a phalanx of other well-known actors in its cast, was to have reached a cliff-hanging point this coming Sunday and then resumed next year for a second season.

But March 13, the same day that Blonien died, a third horse was injured during filming at Santa Anita and was destroyed. HBO, under fire from animal protection groups, abruptly canceled the ill-named "Luck."

What was to have been the first season's closing episode will instead be the finale. And that means we'll never learn whether Hoffman's character succeeded in acquiring Santa Anita and suborning enough tribal officials and politicians to acquire slot machines.

Of course, the real-life drama over who will control gambling in California in the years and decades ahead will continue.

Dan Walters is a columnist for Sacramento Bee. Reach him at dwalters@sacbee.com. For back columns, visit www.sacbee.com/walters.