SHAKOPEE, MN – This is the first of our two-part interview series with Minnesota lawmakers Rep. Brad Tabke and Sen. Eric Pratt. Both have the unique distinction of representing both Canterbury Park and the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community (SMSC) which presents interesting challenges when it comes to sports betting legislation. We thought it would be interesting to get their perspectives on sports betting and its effect on the Canterbury and Native communities.
We’d like to thank both lawmakers for taking time out of their schedules to discuss these issues and share their insights.
Today, Representative Brad Tabke. Tabke is in his second, non-consecutive, term as the Democrat/Farm/Labor (DFL) representative from Shakopee. He sits on the Agriculture Finance and Policy, Commerce Finance and Policy and Public Safety Finance and Policy Committees as well as the Transportation Finance and Policy Committee where he serves as Vice Chair. He is also the Assistant House Majority Leader.
Q – How did the compromise bill on sports betting, that ultimately didn’t make it to a vote, come about?
Tabke – Just to back up a little bit, the 2023 session we had made really big strides in getting a compromise figured out and there was potential for it coming together in 23 but it never quite all the way there.
Any solution has to be bipartisan and there are equal numbers of republicans and democrats that hate gambling, love gambling and are ambivalent to gaming so the only way to put the votes together to get it done was a bipartisan bill. We worked very closely with Pat Garofolo, Helen West, Jeremy Miller, Eric Pratt and lots of folks all through the process.
So, in 23 we made really good progress – we had a deal early in 2023 to get it done and off the table that we thought was a good, viable deal but it never got all the way there. It’s really hard in legislative things to do anything without a deadline. We had tried really hard in 23 to get this done early so it wouldn’t become a political football because it is really important to Canterbury, it’s really important to SMSC, it’s really important to my district to get this done so we tried really hard to get it done and it just couldn’t come together. There wasn’t enough push to get all the entities together. We had a couple of opportunities, but it never really worked
Since this is a bi-partisan bill this is not a DFL House Caucus priority. It’s not the number 1 thing that our caucus wants to get done. It may be what the House wants to get done and certain folks but it’s not something that our members will give up other things to get this done. Those are the realities of setting the table for where we are at.
I try to be as much as a pragmatist as I can and so 2024 came around and we were working on this and we would have some success and the fall back a couple of steps, have a little success and fall back a few steps and we didn’t think it was happening in 24 because we just didn’t have the votes there and then the Tribal community came together and said ‘this is what we can do’ and they put out what was a much better offer than what they had so far and we were able to coalesce around that.
Canterbury and Running Aces agreed, the Tribal communities all agreed, the charities agreed. Everybody came together with a deal that was really good. Republicans agreed, Democrats agreed.
Getting a little wonky here for a little bit, there were several things that had to happen. As a bill with a tax component, it had to originate in the House, get passed in the House and then head over to the Senate.
We had a bill that everyone agreed on. Rep Stephenson and I got our House members on the DFL side, every single one that we could – there are some that are just opposed to any kind of gambling or expansion of gambling and there will be no changing of that. I respect that and honor that and those are folks that we’re just not going to have. Same thing for the Republicans – there are just folks that are going to be there.
With this deal, with everyone being on board, we had every vote that we needed but one. We needed one vote to get to 64 and the Republicans said the whole time that everything was good so the bill was going to pass the House.
The Senate needs three days to pass a bill under regular order: the first day to have the first reading, the second day to have a second reading and third day to have a third reading. We had to pass it on Friday before the end of session. Everything was lined up, everything was ready to go, the Speaker was on board, leadership was on board, we were in good shape.
And then Minority Leader Damuth decreed to everyone on the House Republican side that they could not vote for the bill, that it was going to be held. All day Jim Nash was taking people out in the hallway and talking to them about not voting for the bill and making sure they were all on the same team. They 100% stuck together and there was not a single vote that was available from the republicans though we tried really, really hard to get it there. Pat Garafolo wasn’t going to vote for it and their team stuck together. I can’t speak to their reasons, but it all seemed very, very political like they didn’t want to give us a win at the end of session. They were holding it hostage for other things to happen.
Jeremy Miller told us many times that we were fine in the Senate and we were in good shape there. That Friday we could have put it on the floor and forced a vote to see if they would have stuck together.
Our options were: we could put to the vote, but every indication was that it would fail and then we would have been done. There were no other Hail Mary’s there is nothing else that we could have done. We decided not to put it to a vote and the Senate adjourned early that day so we wouldn’t have had a chance to do it anyway because they had adjourned, and we would have missed that first reading.
Q – In one respect, wouldn’t it have been more beneficial for the DFL, politically, to call for the vote and put the Republicans on record as opposing the compromise?
Tabke – There is no question about that. Politically, the best move was to have it and get them on the record, but you don’t recover from that. We still had Saturday and Sunday for some Hail Marys to try and get some other pieces done.
Q – Was a Hail Mary or other plan even realistic at that point?
Tabke – It was very realistic. Once we got to the deal and had the deal put together, especially without having Running Aces holding votes, there were options and opportunities before the end of the session.
The other big issue we had all through the 2024 session was that the House GOP was playing a stalling game. Everything was a stall. Things that should have only taken five minutes and got everyone’s opinions on the floor were taking 10 hours to discuss. Bills that passed with huge bipartisan support just were talked about for hours and hours.
On Sunday, we had a tax bill coming up and what we were hoping to do was get the sports betting bill into the tax bill and getting it passed but since there was the delay and stall tactics that were happening for all session, but especially on that day, we didn’t have enough time to get all the bills passed that were needed to get passed and they all got squished into the tax bill and they were all things that had been heard and passed before.
And before everyone starts freaking out on me, there was nothing that I was aware of that was new in those bills. These were all things that had been on the floor and were passed, and we were just re-passing them for final passage. We wanted to put the sports betting bill in there, but it would have had its own time to be discussed and taken care of. So that’s what we were hoping to do on Sunday but there just wasn’t time to get it done.
If we had been under regular orders, we would have been able to get the whole thing done if we could have just gotten one House GOP vote and they wouldn’t do it.
Q – So where does that leave us going into the 2025 session?
Tabke – We’ll know a lot more on November 6. The Republicans had the opportunity when they had the House and the Senate many times to pass sports betting, but they didn’t pass sports betting. Putting this up as a DFL fails kind of thing is really frustrating to me because the opportunities have been there.
Especially on Twitter a lot of folks like to say that the DFL is standing in the way of this but we’re the only ones that have actually been working on getting this done and finding a compromise.
There are different things moving forward and different things that we all care about. I will not vote against anything that I think is not part of what the compacts that the state of Minnesota have agreed to with the Tribal Nations. They are sovereign nations, and we should respect that. That doesn’t mean that we can’t find compromises that would make everyone successful along the way. I think that there were some really good things in this bill. In year three, for example, there would be $12,000,000 for Canterbury Park, based on projections.
Q – That was my next question – how were the stakeholders going to be affected by the proposed compromise legislation?
Tabke – Canterbury was my number one focus on everything so I can’t remember how the others were affected. It was, frustratingly, a good bill for Canterbury Park. It was a good bill for Running Aces as well. They would have made a lot of money too.
A lot of folks are thinking that Running Aces is on our team, but they are just trying to kill the sports betting bill. They would rather not have a sports betting bill and that is not what we need here in Shakopee. A sports betting bill is the best way to increase purse size. It’s not the only way so we started looking at supporting a lot of different avenues in the last year: the racing industry getting more money through the agriculture department to get more money into the breeders’ fund, things like that. The problem we run in to is that there is not a ton of money at the legislature that goes into Ag. The department is very much self-sustaining and there is not a lot of state money that goes into that. There are a lot of other priorities that are clear and important as well that people have that is not the racing industry.
There is a very prevalent thought that the racing industry is just a bunch of rich folks running horses around in a circle. They lose the fact that this is a huge industry of passionate people that is very important to the state of Minnesota. It brings in millions of dollars to our economy. There are hundreds and hundreds of people that work on the backstretch, feed stores, vets and that kind of stuff that are important pieces that we need to look at and making sure that everything is successful and sustainable. That is my number one goal. If I’m re-elected, I will continue working on that.
Q – If sports betting had been really successful, beat projections, under this bill, the tracks would have made out really well. What was the structures?
My big problem with sports betting this whole time has been that there is not a lot of money on the back end. What Tribes get, what folks get, what brick and mortar building like Canterbury would get with sports betting is not a lot. The money goes to the middle companies like Fan Duel, for example. Those types of companies can make a lot of money as the middleman in this.
What the compromise bill did was increase the tax on the front end and we used that captured money before it went to the sports betting companies like the Fan Duels. We captured that money on the front end before it got into the system so it reduced some that would have come out of the back end through the winnings and profits, that sort of thing. We used that money to increase money for problem gaming and charities. Youth sports got a big chunk of money. In the end, Jeremy Miller was adamant that we would have more sports events, bringing more of those big events to Minnesota.
There were a lot of different things that money went for. The number one thing that people talk to me about when it comes to sports betting is problem gambling. What sports betting does, and why I can get behind it even though I’m not a big fan of the expansion of gambling; right now, all this is being done by offshore websites and some shady dark places where people are betting. Those folks, if they get behind on things, can really fall into debt and really bad things can happen. If we can bring this into the light in a well-regulated industry, then we’re able to identify and help them. They can self-block and other ways of keeping them out of the system. This would allow us to be able to do that – identify them and give them help.
Q- Where did the DFL vision that the Tribes have exclusivity in gaming come from?
Tabke – That has always been where our bill has been and, in order to have the votes in the House, at least at this point, that’s where this needs to be. Exactly where that came from, I’m not exactly, 100% sure.
Q – Running Aces and Senator Pratt have gone on the record as saying that there is no language in the compacts that provide for Tribal gaming exclusivity. I think that this is part of the reason that running Aces is filing lawsuits as well.
Tabke – Representative Stephenson handled the nuts and bolts on how sports betting would work to get to a deal that everyone could agree to, and I worked on the Tribal track and the Canterbury side of things, so Running Aces was not so much in my wheelhouse of things I was working on.
I very much support, as I’ve already said, Tribal Sovereignty and make sure that we are not going back on those compacts. It is my understanding that there is a very good case to be made in there that this type of thing needs left only for Tribes.
As we go into future discussions, Taro Ito [President, Running Aces] has said that anything we discussed in 2024 is off the books now, it doesn’t matter anymore and he’s not going to agree to any deals so from my guess that we’ll be starting over. If I’m around in 2025 to help on this, I think everything will be back on the table and we’ll have to stake out where everybody is. Mr. Ito has been very clear that even a very good deal that would generate a lot of money is no longer on the table.
Q – For a lot of folks involved in the racing industry, there seemed to be a dichotomy between your vote in committee to move the Hostorical Horse Racing (HHR) bill to the next level and your vote on the floor to make HHR illegal. What was your thought process?
Tabke – When we were in committee it was a different bill. It had both a ban of HHR in it – and I’ve been very clear, even to the people at Canterbury, that I believe HHR is a fundamental violation of the compacts; I’ve been to places where HHR operates and to me it’s clearly a slot machine – and the stadium gaming machines that are currently in use at Canterbury. Whether those are legal or not, I was very much against taking a step backward at Canterbury Park. This is something that is currently going through the legal process and that would have taken us backwards so that is where that vote came from.
As everyone at Canterbury knows, I was very upset when they were looking at HHR. The HHR thing was just noise. It was not going to get us to any solutions. The best solution in the first part of 2024 was to get to a legislative solution. I’m not saying that we could have got to a solution if the HHR thing didn’t happen, but I don’t believe that attempting HHR through the racing commission was a good move or a good plan whatsoever.
It forced legislative hands that were unnecessary to force and that’s how we ended up where we were. I didn’t want that vote. People at Canterbury told me that I could have just not voted instead of voting for it but that’s not the way I work. I am terrible at politics. That would have been the best thing politically for me to do walk away and not say where I’m at on things. I was as clear as I could possibly be with people – even the loud phone calls – that it was a bad move to move forward with that. It wasn’t going to gain us anything to get sports betting done. It did cause a lot of problems and made it more difficult for me to get my work done. In the end, we figured out some paths that worked but it was a lot more difficult than it needed to be with that HHR piece.
It was unfortunate and I would have much rather had that done through the legal system and got it done the way it should have gotten done but there was the opinion from the state that this was very clearly a violation of the compacts. There was a lot of legal opinions around the same things. I understand that people can differ on those and if folks had waited to June to request going through the racing commission, it would have been fine. That vote would not have been taken.
It was unfortunate but I understand where everyone is coming from. Folks are scared and really concerned about the state of the industry and trusting the legislature to get things done. I was extremely confident that this deal could have gone through. I did not expect my colleagues to play politics with thousands of jobs and an entire multi-million-dollar industry. I don’t know how they could not have cared about this and still pull all votes when everyone agrees. Legislative agreements are moments in time, and you have to seize that and take it when you can. That was a very short moment in time.
I’m not super negative about getting something done in the future. If Rep Stephenson or I lose this fall, it is going to be impossible to get a sports betting bill that is positive for Canterbury Park. No matter who is in charge of things. Even if the Republicans are in charge. They had opportunities three sessions in a row and it’s not something that they’ve cared about or done.
This is something that we must get done. I feel badly for everybody who is concerned about the future of the jobs that they love and concerned about where things are going. Legislation is messy and it runs into problems, like we did this year. I can’t guarantee anything, but this is something I will continue to work on. I’m still really mad about it. It should have passed this session.
We could have been up and running already. This was Pat Garofalo’s addition to the bill: we had reciprocity with other states [if a company was licensed for sports betting in Iowa or Wisconsin, they were considered licensed here] so we would have been up and running on July 1. There were a lot of really good Republican provisions and a lot of good Democratic provisions that were in there, it would have been a net positive for the state, and it would have helped a lot people.
Senator Pratt and I are in the unique position of representing both Canterbury Park and a Tribal entity and it’s important that we get this done. Getting it right affects thousands of jobs in Shakopee and we have to do it.
