Scarborough Downs claims gambling promoter Shawn Scott manipulated Westbrook voters into rejecting slot machines at a relocated Downs in a law suit filed recently.

The suit argues residents supported the idea before Scott’s propaganda machine turned public opinion around. Scarborough Downs based its claim that residents supported building a racing track with slot machines on a poll it conducted before the vote.

Downs owner Sharon Terry said, in filing the suit, she wanted to make sure Scott “doesn’t walk away from this a rich man after doing what he did.”

In a lawsuit filed in Cumberland County Superior Court, the Downs accuses Scott, a resident of St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands who owns gambling operations in several states, of being behind two lobbying groups opposing the Downs’s efforts to relocate its track in Westbrook in 2003.

The suit alleges their efforts cost the Downs the opportunity to receive $50 million from Penn National Gaming, the Downs’s partner in developing a Southern Maine racino.

Scott’s attorney, Bruce Merrill, said the suit had no basis in fact, and that “when everything is brought to light,” it will become clear that “neither Shawn Scott nor (his company) Capital Seven has done anything wrong.” Merrill has not yet filed a response, and has until early December to do so.

Scott was working to bring a racino to Bangor and backed a statewide referendum in November 2003, in which Maine voters approved installing slot machines at harness racing tracks.

The Downs sought to leave Scarborough because it wanted to move to a community that would vote in favor of having slot machines at the horse racetrack. Scarborough had voted to ban slots in 2002, and voters town-wide rejected a proposal to overturn that ban in November of 2003. The Downs optioned land in Saco and Westbrook, in hopes of relocating to one of those cities.

The groups opposing a Westbrook racino took out advertisements on the radio and in newspapers – including the American Journal – that the Downs called “defamatory” in its suit.

After they were published, a federal judge ruled the ads could not be republished, saying the ads’ allegations about Penn National were false. And a state investigation led the executive director of the Maine Harness Racing Commission to conclude that one of the groups, “Good Morals for Maine,” was founded by one of Scott’s employees.

Influencing voters

George Rodrigues was one of the members of “Our City, No Slots” a citizens’ group that actively campaigned against the racino in Westbrook, which was not a group the Downs alleged was run by Scott.

Rodrigues said Our City, No Slots ran its anti-racino campaign separate from the ones run by Scott and Casinos No! He described his group’s efforts as a low-budget door-to-door campaign that tried to stay out of the battle between the racetrack and the larger anti-racino groups.

“We just did the best to run our campaign and stay out of the back and forth between those guys,” he said. “We knew this was a tussle between the big boys.”

While he thought that the passion of the local anti-slots movement was the driving force behind the failure of the racino vote in Westbrook, Rodrigues acknowledges that Scott’s advertisements did help sway the vote. He said he thought Scott’s ads were more effective than anything sponsored by Casinos No!

“It certainly would have been closer without Shawn Scott’s ads,” Rodrigues said.

As for the Downs’ allegations that Scott’s negative public relations campaign was the reason the vote failed in Westbrook, Rodrigues said he didn’t think there was enough time for Scott’s efforts to have an effect on residents. He said since the campaign really only got rolling the first week in December for the Dec. 30 election, he thought his group’s door-to-door efforts had a bigger effect.

“In my opinion, it was the passion of that campaign that made the difference,” he said. “We knocked on a lot of doors.”

The Downs suit also claims that Scott was behind allegations from a California attorney that the Westbrook City Council was violating Maine’s open meetings laws in the rush to hold a city-wide vote before the Dec. 31, 2003, deadline. The Downs called that an effort “to intimidate the Westbrook City Council into refusing even to hold a referendum.”

City Administrator Jerre Bryant said he did not specifically remember getting any information from Scott in the weeks leading up to the racino vote. He does recall a challenge to the legality of the referendum, but he said the city decided to go ahead with the vote because it felt there was no merit to the challenge.

Jim Violette, the president of the City Council, was also president at the time of the racino vote. He said he does not remember Shawn Scott coming before the council with any information about the racetrack or Downs owner Sharon Terry.

“Scott never approached the council or talked to the council,” he said.

The Downs also claimed Scott instigated and paid the legal bills for a lawsuit filed by a Westbrook couple, John and Carol Peters – allegedly the parents of one of Scott’s attorneys – seeking to block the referendum altogether. John Peters said Monday night that he had no knowledge of the new suit filed by Scarborough Downs and declined to comment on the lawsuit filed in 2003.

And the Downs claims that Scott negotiated in competition with the Downs for an option on land in Westbrook where the track wanted to move, if allowed.

Public opinion

Westbrook voters rejected a Dec. 30, 2003, city-wide referendum to allow slots in Westbrook by a vote of 3,168 against to 2,207 in favor. Saco voters rejected a referendum there the same day, 3,793 to 2,316.

The lawsuit claims the Downs conducted a public opinion poll in Westbrook before Scott’s lobbying efforts got under way, and found 50 percent of Westbrook respondents supported bringing slots and a racetrack to the city, if, among other restraints, half of the revenue the city received from the slots would be used to lower property taxes.

The poll did not specify how much money the city would receive, and the report of the poll did not include information on how many people were surveyed, what the margin of error is or when exactly the survey was conducted.

The polling company, Opinion Dynamics Corporation of Cambridge, Mass., did not return phone calls seeking comment on the specifics of the survey.

The suit claims that through “a web of undisclosed agents” Scott opposed the referendum – and a similar one in Saco – and convinced voters in both cities to reject slots.

“The alleged opponents were merely shills paid and/or controlled by (Scott) in an effort to preserve … a monopoly on slot machine gaming in Maine,” the Downs claims in the suit.

The Downs also claims that having used fraud and deceit to gain a monopoly, Scott then sold it for more than $50 million. The buyer, Penn National Gaming, expects to open a slot machine operation in Bangor in the next couple of months.

Penn National also has an exclusive agreement with the Downs to build a racino in Southern Maine, should one be approved. Under that agreement, Penn National would pay for the construction of the new track and buildings, and would collect rent from the Downs, as well as the proceeds from gambling, some of which might be shared back to the Downs.

Rodrigues continues to be active in the movement to keep slots out of Maine. He is part of No Slots for ME!, a statewide group seeking to ban slots from the state. The group had been circulating petitions to get the anti-slot referendum placed on the November ballot, but Rodrigues said by the October 2005 deadline, the group only collected 40,000 of the 51,000 signatures necessary.

Rodrigues said the group did not submit the petitions, but has filed for new petitions and is currently exploring options to get the anti-slot question on the ballot in 2006 or 2007.