Jeb Bush, in the late 80th, a former member of a Florida delegation was sent to Lexington Ky, in order to support Gulfstream Park’s campaign on hosting track for Breeder’s Cup raced. Back in those days, Bush, a brother of the future president and Florida’s secretary of commerce made an astound success in this promotional trip. The Breeder’s Cup indeed came to Gulfstream nine years later, luring in enormous crowds of at least 45,000 each and every time.
Today, when tracks have stalled in a fragile financial state and the issue of slot machines has arisen, Bush, now the governor, has turned his back on tracks, campaigning against slots legalization. Moreover, Bush made further pursuits to clog the proliferation of slot machine gambling, by traveling all the way to Miami and Fort Lauderdale, asking voters not to poll for the proposal. The governor alluded to the fact that about 90% of the money invested in slots would be lost by the gamblers, leaving the state with lamentable consequences.
Gulfstream’s revenues, bereft of slots, once have sized up to $300,000 a day, but this season they’ve ran down to a few serious pitfalls. The tracks visually are not appealing and reminiscent more to a construction zone due to a $145-million remodeling project. Albeit the bonding of the gambling coalition, prior to the March referendum, the tracks were not as yet sufficiently unified. But track officials are cautious about raining down critical statements on Bush, since they know he’ll be an influential persona in the slot machine law drafting.
