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U.S. Senator Dean Heller (R-Nevada) said he anticipates new federal legislation banning all forms of online gambling except poker to be introduced in the coming months. Such a measure would ban Internet sports betting and online casinos, the later of which are currently permitted in the state of New Jersey.
Heller and others in Congress have attempted to pass similar legislation in recent years without any success.
The Nevada Senator wants his home state to become the hub for regulated online poker in the US, however, it is New Jersey that has garnered nearly all the attention up to this point with the Silver State unable to sustain a viable player pool for poker on the Net.
Heller has confirmed that he and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) are working together on the bill.
“We’re trying to keep it from being just a Nevada issue,” Heller said. “So Harry and I are trying to look for help from members in each of our conferences to come forward with legislation that hopefully long term provides a solution for us.”
Heller is walking a tightrope in more ways than one in an effort to entice legislators without their own state gambling agendas while attempting to appease one of the Republican party's biggest donors, Sheldon Adelson. The casino magnate has orchestrated a campaign to abolish the spread of legalized online gambling in the US and that includes poker.
“I think Adelson brings up some reasonable concerns,” Heller said in an interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal editorial board. “And to have the wild wild West as an empire of gambling for the country would have some serious social implications. And I think that’s what he’s concerned with.”
- Gilbert Horowitz, Gambling911.com
