Chief of Staff Stewart Bybee: ‘Still Possible to Pass Internet Poker Bill’

Though Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Republican Senator Dean Heller publicly argued over the prospects of any Internet poker bill to be passed prior to the Congressional lame duck session, Chief of Staff Stewart Bybee told Steve Sebelius of the Las Vegas Review Journal: It's still possible to pass a bill.

"I absolutely think that there is an opportunity to get to that number" of votes, Bybee said. "There are ways to move forward. It's not an easy process. It's never been an easy process."

Time is hardly on the side of Congress as individual states have begun passing their own laws regarding online poker and other forms of Web gambling. 

Reid and Heller, both representing the state of Nevada, want casinos there to control the online gambling sector at the federal level while denying other states like New Jersey, California and Delaware a piece of the multi-billion dollar pie. 

New Jersey State Senator Raymond Lesniak went on the offensive Thursday.

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“I think it’s outrageous that these U.S. senators are trying to take away from the state of New Jersey and other states,” New Jersey State Senator Ray Lesniak told WCBS 880′s Levon Putney.

“They want to keep it to themselves, most likely focused on Nevada, to the exclusion of our casinos in Atlantic City which need all the help they can get,” Lesniak said.
“If New Jersey allowed it, our casinos would get an additional $200 million of revenues a year,” Lesniak told Putney. “The senators in Washington would take away that opportunity and take away hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues that our casinos need,” he added.

Meanwhile, back in Washington, the Senate Majority Leader insists that Heller was supposed to have mustered up enough GOP votes by this week to get an already drafted measure passed by year’s end.  Heller says there was no such agreement.

The Republican Senator instead states that he anticipated the bill to be passed in the House first, something Reid says was never discussed.

"In May, you have agreed to help me cement Republican support for the bill in the Senate. Since then, you have been unable to garner the necessary Republican votes to pass this bill," Reid wrote.

"I did not want this issue to become political in nature, but I cannot stand by while you abdicate your responsibility as a U.S. senator representing Nevada," Reid added. "Nevadans deserve someone who will fight for them. Not someone who is willing to stand by and suggest that others should fight for them."

Sebelius questions Bybee’s notion that the “House-First” strategy was ever discussed to begin with.

If that's true, it was very quiet. Heller does not appear to have mentioned it publicly in any of the stories written about the issue up until he wrote his letter to Reid. When I asked Bybee whether any written evidence of those discussions exists - emails, memos, letters, even a Post-It note stuck to somebody's computer - he said no, but insisted that there was a verbal agreement.

Portions of the Reid draft legislation leaked out to the press this past week.  The measure looks to further enforce current Internet gambling prohibition such as casino games and sports betting while exempting online poker from the equation.

- Ace King, Gambling911.com