In a little more than two weeks, the Poker Players Alliance will host a two-day policy conference in Washington, D.C., that will bring its members right to the people who will ultimately decide poker's fate in the United States.
John Pappas, the PPA's executive director, recently sat down with Card Player to talk about the conference. His interview follows the story.
PPA members who head to D.C. from Oct. 22-24 for the conference will attend seminars outlining the legality of poker and the ways to go to battle for poker at local levels. Then, PPA members will head over to Capitol Hill and meet face-to-face with their elected officials and staff members to tell them exactly how they feel about current laws concerning poker.
Some of the speakers invited include Charlie Nesson, a law professor at Harvard; Sallie James, policy analyst for the Cato Institute; Keith Whyte, executive director for the National Council on Problem Gambling; and poker players Andy Bloch, Chad Brown, Barry Greenstein, Howard Lederer, Chris Moneymaker, Vanessa Rousso, and Victor Ramdin have confirmed.
So far, just under 100 PPA members have registered. The PPA is hoping for 150, but isn't going for just sheer numbers. Although the conference was announced to all PPA members, the PPA has been specifically targeting its members who live in what the organization has defined as key Congressional districts. The Congress members in these districts sit on the House committee for financial services as well as the judiciary committee, and are some of the most powerful members of Congress thanks to their seats on these committees.
Visit www.pokerplayersalliance.org for more information and to register for the conference.
With almost 800,000 members, the PPA is the largest poker organization dedicated to fighting for the legality of the game of poker. Pappas has been part of the PPA since it was founded nearly two years ago, and he just recently became its executive director.
Card Player: Tell us about the conference.
John Pappas: Well, it's going to be a really spectacular event. What we're doing is we're bringing in and we've invited PPA members who reside in key Congressional districts, where those members of Congress who are going to be more intimately involved in Internet gambling live. Those members are the highest members of the House financial services, the House judiciary committee, as well as some leadership offices on the House and the Senate side.
So, we've been doing some direct mailing to them and letting them know about the conference that we've put together, which is going to include an opportunity for these people to go to the Hill and meet with their members of Congress. It's going to provide receptions and informative sessions on how to lobby members of Congress, kind of the messaging of the PPA, and the messaging regarding Internet poker in general.
And then, we're also going to have a serious policy forum to kind of cap the whole thing off on Capital Hill where we're going to invite staff, media, etcetera, and we'll have a number of key panelists discussing the key issues of Internet gaming.
The point of this is really to show a real constituency for poker on Capital Hill by not only bringing in the recognizable pros, but also the average joe poker players who reside in key Congressional districts and are passionate enough to come out to Washington, D.C. – on their own dime, mind you – to speak to Congress about these issues.
CP: What is the conference's ultimate goal?
JP: It's to raise the level of awareness. We're going to have direct access of Congress. We're going to talk to them about the Barney Frank bill; we're going to urge them to support and pass that. We're going to talk to them about the Robert Wexler bill. And then, there are a couple of recent items that have spilled out, and that's the WTO issue, obviously, and the current [Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act] regulations that were proposed by the Treasury Department earlier this week.
So, we have a number of things to go and talk about and hopefully get some clarity and really show members of Congress that there's a true constituency out there, that this isn't just a bunch of offshore companies that care about this issue. These are real Americans who feel passionate about the game of poker, and they want the ability to play online, they want the ability to play in their homes, they want the ability to play it in bars and taverns, and they don't feel that the federal government should be getting involved in their personal decisions.
CP: How has the response been from the members?
JP: It's been good. Obviously, we want to be a little stronger. We want to get to 150. We're just under a hundred right now. This wasn't an idea of quantity; it was an idea of quality. We didn't blanket our entire membership [with information about the conference] because it doesn't do us a lot of good to bring in 400 or 500 people from the Maryland, Virginia, and the D.C. area who could come here rather easily. What we wanted to do was target people from key Congressional districts. I think we're going to have about every member of Congress covered from those districts.
CP: What have you heard from members of Congress concerning the fly-in?
JP: They've been very supportive of it. Actually, the reason why we're doing this is because we've heard from members of Congress who said you should bring your folks out here.
We had a really great meeting in August with Congressmen Pete Sessions in his Dallas, Texas, office. It was myself and a number of our local PPA members, including Clonie Gowen, who's a Dallas, Texan, and Robert Williamson III, another Dallas, Texan. We went in and sat down with him and talked to him about the Wexler bill and why it just didn't make sense that a game of skill is being outlawed on the Internet. And it really resonated and it really came through and what I saw was, wow, this is something we need to replicate, this is something we needed to do more of. Based on that meeting, I thought we needed to get people out to Washington. Whether we make 20 meetings or 200 meetings, I think it's going to be a worthwhile event.
[Note: Sessions recently signed onto the Wexler bill.]CP: How much more does it resonate with elected officials when the information comes from someone in their district rather than a lobbyist?
JP: That's who they have to respond to. They have an obligation to listen and they have an obligation to respond to the desires of their constituency. We're showing members of Congress that there is a constituency out there who probably wouldn't have been politically engaged if it wasn't for this issue. For a number of our members, this is the first time entering into the political spectrum. What we're trying to do is help them, educate them, and bring them up to speed on the issues so they could be effective advocates here in Washington.
CP: Who are some of the strongest allies poker has in Congress?
JP: Certainly, Congressmen Robert Wexler is one of our lead allies. He's the sponsor of H.R. 2610: The Skill Game Protection Act. Shelley Berkley from Nevada is also a real champion, as is Jon Porter from Nevada, a Republican who just joined onto Mr. Wexler's bill.
And then, of course, Barney Frank. He is more of a champion, not specific to poker, but a champion of rational public policy that would seek to regulate Internet gaming and not try to prohibit it.
CP: What are some of the more regional battles poker is facing?
JP: We've seen a lot of different towns, recently, consider legalizing poker in bars and taverns. There's also some tax cases that are of relevance, and the PPA, while we haven't widely announced this, we are going to be backing the appeal of a federal Tax Court case in regards to tournament poker winnings, and we view it as a real opportunity and a forum at the federal level to prove that poker is a game of skill. And that will help us out in a lot of the different state levels, where poker may be excluded from certain gaming because it is viewed as a game with a predominance of chance.
CP: What do you feel 2007 will bring for poker legality?
JP: At a federal level, we still hold out hope that there will be legislative success for the poker-playing community, whether it's the Barney Frank bill or the Wexler bill. But also, we'd like to successfully put a hold on regulations that will enforce the UIGEA until Congress is able to fully digest what they did last year.
There's this iMEGA lawsuit as well, which I'm not as familiar with, but I know there is some promise there, as well. But that is more on the judicial front than it is on the legislative front.
