On Thursday, the Poker Players Alliance (PPA), the poker industry’s main lobbying voice for players, will spend seven hours lobbying members of Washington State’s legislature in Olympia. The goal is to convince officials to overturn a law that makes playing online poker in Washington State a Class C felony.
Text from a press release sent by the PPA on Tuesday explains why the D.C-based lobbying organization felt the need to persuade elected officials in Washington State to act: “In Washington, playing poker online is now a felony – like child pornography or heroin possession – making any of the over 800,000 Washington residents who can legally play poker in card rooms look like hardened criminals if they play online.”
John Pappas, Executive Director of the PPA, will lead the charge in Olympia and joining him will be three of the game’s most visible pros. Andy Bloch, a former member of the MIT Blackjack Team, has over $2 million in career World Series of Poker (WSOP) earnings to his name along with a pair of World Poker Tour (WPT) final tables. Bloch is a graduate of Harvard Law School and one of the top mathematical minds in the game. The Full Tilt Poker pro will be present tomorrow, just as he has at many of the PPA’s past lobbying efforts.
Poker News Daily Guest Columnist and Women in Poker Hall of Famer Linda Johnson will also be in attendance tomorrow. Johnson was just the second woman in history to win an open WSOP event and also served as the in-studio announcer for the WPT. She’s a titan of the charity world and co-founded PokerGives, which helps poker players give back to society.
Rounding out the pro contingent in Washington State is Jan Fisher. She was inducted into the Women in Poker Hall of Fame two years ago and also formerly worked with the WPT. Along with Johnson, she is a partner in Card Player Cruises and co-founded the Tournament Directors Association. Fisher, a Seattle native, is one of the most well spoken players poker has to offer and will be invaluable to the lobbying effort on Thursday.
Local PPA members from Washington State will also be part of the day, which will begin at 8:30am local time with an hour-long legislative briefing at the Red Lion Hotel in Olympia. Upon its conclusion, the group will head to the State Capitol for one-on-one meetings with elected officials until 5:00pm. The PPA revealed that it is targeting meetings with about 40 lawmakers.
Last September, the Washington State Supreme Court upheld the controversial law following a constitutional challenge from PPA Washington State Director Lee Rousso. A lawyer by trade, Rousso charged that the statute violated the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution, but the state’s highest judicial body disagreed.
The Washington State Supreme Court contended, “It is not the role of the judiciary to second guess the wisdom of the legislature, which enacted this ban. The court has no authority to conduct its own balancing of the pros and cons stemming from banning, regulating, or openly permitting internet gambling.” It added that the law treated in-state and out-of-state online gaming interests equally.
A few days after the State Supreme Court’s ruling, PokerStars ceased taking real money action from Washington residents. In mid-November, Full Tilt Poker followed suit.
In an interview with ESPN.com that appeared in November, Margarita Prentice, one of the driving forces behind the 2006 law, told poker players affected by the PokerStars and Full Tilt pullouts to “go pump gas.” She charged, “I just think some of these arguments are utter nonsense. You mean you’re going to move so you can play poker? Gee, lots of luck in your life… I have nothing against card playing. That’s fine. If you want to do that, but I’m sure not going to worry about someone… you know. Let them go pump gas.”
Visit ThePPA.org for more details.