Poker players: We helped beat Leach

[clevfan]

Poker players: We helped beat Leach
Online gambling fans were angry about his role in passing a new ban.

By JANE NORMAN
REGISTER WASHINGTON BUREAU


November 17, 2006



Washington, D.C. - Advocates of online gaming are taking credit for playing a role in the Nov. 7 defeat of longtime Rep. Jim Leach of Iowa, a chief backer of a new law that effectively outlawed gambling on the Internet.

Leach, a Republican from Iowa City, lost his bid for a 16th term in a stunning upset to Democrat David Loebsack of Mount Vernon, as Democrats swept offices across the country and took control of the U.S. House and Senate.

Leach's defeat by 2 percentage points came less than a month after President Bush signed a law making it illegal for financial institutions and credit card companies to process payments on Internet wagers. Aides to Leach dismissed the suggestion that online gaming advocates had anything to do with his defeat.

John Pappas, a spokesman for the Poker Players Alliance, said Thursday that his non-profit organization blasted out e-mails to 150,000 poker fans across the country with instructions on how to register to vote, as well as a scorecard on how members of Congress voted on the gambling bill.

While the alliance did not specifically target Leach, Pappas said he believes motivated poker players in eastern Iowa's 2nd District turned out to vote, and word quickly spread online about Leach's work on the new law.

"There were lots of stories in the publications online gamers read," he said, such as CardPlayer, Bluff and Wicked Chops Poker.

While the alliance can't take credit for Leach's loss, "I can certainly say it played a very significant role in his defeat," Pappas said.

Online gaming sites gloated after the election. "Online Gambling Ban Proponent Leach Booted," was one headline. "A victory for Internet gambling as Jim Leach gets voted out," said Gambling911.

In addition, following the election the poker group commissioned an automated poll of 1,033 voters in the 2nd District, asking how the poker issue influenced their decisions.

Among those who knew about the law, 15 percent said it influenced them to support Loebsack. Another 10 percent said that it influenced them to support Leach.

Online poker advocates contend that was enough to doom Leach in a race lost by just 5,711 votes.

"There's enough evidence here to suggest it didn't help him," said Thomas Riehle of RT Strategies, a partner in the firm that conducted the poll Sunday through Monday. It had a margin of error of 3 percentage points, Riehle said.

However, Greg Wierzynski, Leach's chief of staff, scoffed at the notion that the gaming ban was Leach's undoing. "As we all know, when poker players have weak hands, they bluff," he said.

Wierzynski said Leach's congressional office received "a bunch of angry phone calls" from opponents of the gambling bill, but couldn't tell whether any were from Iowans because the callers refused to identify themselves. The calls were "laced with four-letter words," added Wierzynski.

Leach for years has pushed for an end to Internet gambling, saying large losses by gamblers destroy families, and Internet gambling was bound to spread.

"If Congress had not acted, gamblers would soon be able to place bets not just from home computers but from their cell phones while they drive home from work or their Blackberrys as they wait in line at the movies," Leach said in September.

With Leach gone, the gaming lobby now is hoping to obtain an exemption from the new law for online poker.

Pappas conceded that Leach listened to poker players' arguments, even sitting down for a hand of poker in his office earlier this year with three of the world's top professional players so they could make the case it is a game of skill, not chance. "I wasn't in the room, but I think one of the pros won," Pappas said.

[jimmy the greek]

Yeah but leach sleeps easy at night knowing he put a major dent in the terrorism money laundering machine lol

Speaking of money laundering i just did some but please don't send the rcmp after me, there was a $5er in my jeans that survived the wash lol