Amendment 13 passes after years of attempts
After years of failing to push greyhound racing reform through the Florida Legislature, animal-welfare advocates took their mission directly to the state’s voters this week — scoring such a decisive victory that proponents say it signals the eventual end of the sport across the country.
“A 69-percent vote in Florida — a state with a still-conservative electorate — shows that this is now unstoppable,” said Carey Theil, executive director of GREY2K USA, the main force behind the Yes on 13 campaign to support the racing ban.
“It sends a message not only to the remaining dog tracks in the nation but all around the world that dogs are members of our families and we will not tolerate
industries that harm them.”
Of Florida’s 11 amendments that passed Tuesday night, Amendment 13, which bans commercial dog racing, had the third-highest margin of victory, despite the campaign spending a relatively modest $3 million, having no consultants, no celebrity advertising and no public relations firm on the payroll. By contrast, Amendment 6 — or “Marsy’s Law,” giving rights to crime victims — raised more than 10 times as much but passed with 62 percent of the vote.
So how did Amendment 13 win and what will happen to the nation’s remaining dog tracks?
The National Greyhound Association, the racing industry’s trade group, claims it passed because voters were “misled into supporting a measure that not only will cost thousands of jobs in the state, but one that opens the door for future campaigns to force the radical animal rights agenda on the people.”
Jim Gartland, the national group’s director, said one of the things that bothered him most was the characterization of the industry as abusive.
“It makes absolutely no sense,” he said. “If we rely on the greyhounds for our living, why would we mistreat them?”
But the Yes on 13 campaign had something voters apparently found compelling: state reports of the dogs being injured or even dying on the track and in some cases the video footage to prove it.
It made for powerful TV, and that’s where the Committee to Support Dogs — the Yes on 13 campaign — spent the bulk of its money. While opponents were renting billboards and posting yard signs, supporters put 94 percent of their donations into television ads in major Florida markets that showed dogs tumbling and twisting during a race and pressing their noses to the wire cages where they spend much of their days.
“The moment [pet] owners saw greyhounds falling and dying on the track, the campaign was over,” Theil said.
In fact, he added, the amendment failed to reach the 60-percent margin needed to pass in only the three TV markets where the campaign did buy ads — Tallahassee, Gainesville and Panama City. On the other hand, it passed in 10 of the 11 counties around the state that have active dog tracks, including Seminole, home to the Orlando Sanford Kennel Club in Longwood, where it won 70 percent of the vote.
At that club, General Manager Mitch Cohen referred questions to the corporate owners, Penn National Gaming, a casino and racetrack owner based in Pennsylvania. While all other tracks in Florida also have card rooms to supplement their dog-racing revenue, Sanford Orlando does not, making its future more tentative.
“This [election result] will have an obvious impact on our investment at Sanford Orlando Kennel Club and our 100-plus employees, some of whom have worked there for several decades,” said Jeff Morris, a Penn National vice president. “For now, it will be business as usual as we begin to contemplate our next steps.”
Florida’s 11 active dog tracks will have until Jan. 1, 2021, to phase out their live greyhound racing. They’ll still be able to race horses, if their tracks can accommodate the event, and they’ll still be able to have wagering on simulcast races from other tracks, including from dog tracks in the five remaining states where the practice is still active and legal.
But as Florida gets out of the dog racing business, Gartland said, it’ll be that much harder for those outof-state tracks to make money as greyhound breeders look for other sources of income.
“I don’t see it as an end [now] — but it deals a big blow to the industry,” he said.
The 5,000 to 8,000 greyhounds now racing in Florida — many of whom will be near the end of their competitive careers in two years — are widely expected to go to other tracks or be adopted, according to animal welfare groups, despite continued claims from some Amendment 13 opponents that dogs could be euthanized. Grey2K USA has offered to work with the industry on adoption, as has the Pet Alliance of Greater Orlando, which helped hundreds of dogs from Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands find new homes after Hurricane Maria last year.
It’s not clear if the industry will accept those offers, but the National Greyhound Association has said it will “ensure that all the greyhounds dislocated by the passage of Amendment 13 are properly accounted for and cared for as they transition.”
Meanwhile, the state’s industry group — the Florida Greyhound Association — has re-issued a statement it circulated before the vote claiming that the racing ban’s passage will “trigger thousands of lawsuits, as every entity that could establish a legitimate claim that Amendment 13 adversely affected their ‘reasonable investment-backed expectations’ could be expected to file a lawsuit.”
The statement, by former Florida Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp and former appellate judge-turned-lobbyist Paul Hawkes, suggests the ban will cost Florida taxpayers “hundreds of millions” of dollars in damages from the suit — which Theil labels “ridiculous.”
“This is a gambling business,” he said. “The laws regarding gambling change constantly. It has been banned and legalized and banned and legalized many times. When you’re in a business like that, you’re taking your chances.”
Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, an ardent supporter of Amendment 13, did not weigh in on the merits of such a claim. Instead, Bondi emailed a statement saying, “I am pleased the voters of Florida cast their ballots, by such an overwhelming margin, to protect greyhounds. If litigation is brought, we will review it at that time and take the appropriate action.”
Ultimately, Theil claims, the industry has no one to blame but itself. From 2011 onward, his group tried to pass reforms in the Florida Legislature that would have allowed dog tracks with other gambling operations to continue without the dog racing, as state law previously required. The industry fought it, and it also fought a bill to ban steroid use in racing greyhounds and a bill to track greyhound injuries statewide.
“They should have been on a path to reform years ago, and instead they deceived themselves with this story that we were radicals and extremists,” Theil said. “I don’t think they realized until Wednesday morning, if even then, that we were actually channeling the mainstream view on the welfare of dogs.”