So quiet you can hear the chips drop

As Arizona prepares for a massive expansion of gambling – with at least four and potentially up to 11 new casinos in the state and sports betting from the comfort of your couch – howls of protest can be heard ...

... Wait a minute.

Where are the howls of protest? Where is the Center for Arizona Policy’s Cathi Herrod, an influential lobbyist who has long opposed gambling on moral grounds yet is eerily silent today?

Where are the government watchdogs, who blow the whistle at the first hint that the fix is in for people who have friends in high places?

Where is Attorney General Mark Brnovich, who from the start should have been demanding the details of this deal to ensure that it is in the public interest?

Gov. Doug Ducey on Thursday both unveiled and signed off on a major expansion of gambling in the state – not to mention an armload of multimillion-dollar gifts to some of his biggest campaign donors — and no one has any concerns about what the heck is going on here?

The secrecy? The sweetheart gifties to the governor’s pals?

There are two reasons for the silence, I suppose:

1. There is big, big money to be made.

2. That big, big money will be made by friends of both Democrats and Republicans. Specifically, by the state’s Native American tribes and its professional sports team owners. Translation: Complain at your peril. “The cost of screwing around with this is very high,” said one lobbyist, who like everyone I talked with declined to speak publicly about this deal. “There’s too much money to be gained. There’s no upside financially to opposing this. The money is condensed on the approval side. Nobody is representing the public interest.”

Certainly not the normally plodding Arizona Senate, which on Monday rammed through several votes in order to get House Bill 2772 into Ducey’s eager hands. He signed the emergency bill on Thursday, along with amendments expanding the state’s tribal gaming operations.

The bill will legalize sports and fantasy sports betting in Arizona and clear the way for a major expansion of tribal gambling, allowing more slot machines, new table games and anywhere from four to 11 new casinos to be built over the next 20 years.

Prior to Thursday, Ducey wouldn’t saying what, exactly, was in his deal with the tribes, and the Legislature apparently wasn’t curious enough to insist upon knowing what it is they were agreeing to.

Or at least to insist upon clueing the rest of us in.

The bill authorizes 20 licenses to set up sportsbooks — 10 for the state’s 23 tribes and 10 for the owners of professional sports franchises, PGA golf courses and racetracks who in turn can offer sub-licenses to set up additional sportsbooks elsewhere.

Online and mobile betting also will be allowed, making it oh-so-easy to bet the farm, so to speak, as you sit at home pounding down beers and watching the big game.

Will Larry Fitzgerald catch the next pass headed his way? Will the Diamondbacks score in the 7th?

In other words, ka-CHING. For those sports owners, that is, many of whom are big donors to Ducey’s campaigns.

One national sports analyst told The Arizona Republic’s Ryan Randazzo to expect more than $3 billion a year in sports betting in Arizona, generating more than $200 million a year in revenue for sportsbooks.

Yet in Arizona, we won’t be auctioning off these lucrative licenses to the highest bidder.

Instead, Ducey and the Legislature are offering Michael Bidwill, owner of the Arizona Cardinals, and Ken Kendrick, owner of the Arizona Diamondbacks, and the other pro-sports owners the exclusive rights to run the state’s off-reservation bookie operations.

The price of the license hasn’t been specified, nor has the state’s cut of the profits.

And nobody will explain why, suddenly, competition is viewed as a bad thing.

Or why, suddenly, traditional opponents of gambling suddenly have nothing to say. Cathi Herrod, for example, opposed a Ducey proposal to allow keno games in restaurants a couple of years ago. But she’s OK with this massive expansion of gambling in the state?

“Center for Arizona Policy has not taken a position on the sports betting legislation you asked about,” a spokeswoman for Herrod’s organization told me on Wednesday.

No doubt, Herrod is making a bet of her own — that she’d better stay on the good side of Ken and Randy Kendrick, who are big supporters of socially conservative causes.

A few legislators tried, at least, to slow down this freight/gravy train.

During Monday’s debate, Sens. Sally Ann Gonzales, D-Tucson, and Michelle Ugenti-Rita, R-Scottsdale, questioned why the bill was being railroaded through and why, oh, why pro-sports team owners were getting the exclusive rights to run bookie operations.

“We are going to award people who have monopolies, more monopolies,” Ugenti-Rita said. “I just fundamentally don’t agree with that approach.”

Which makes her an army of one. Two, if you count Gonzales.

Beyond that, the silence is ... quite understandable, actually.

There is, after all, money – big, big money – to be made.