The move comes 47 days before voters will decide whether to allow the two north Jersey casinos – the first time casino gambling would be permitted outside of Atlantic City since gaming opened there in 1978. Sponsors of the measure, including Senate President Steve Sweeney (D-Gloucester), argued that the new casinos would initially create thousands of new construction jobs and would also eventually allow New Jersey to recapture some of the gambling revenue that’s been lost as new casinos have opened in neighboring states like NY and Pennsylvania.
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In their statement Thursday, Fireman and Gural said they “believe deeply” that north casinos provide a “remarkable opportunity that should not be squandered”. The benefits include 43,000 new jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in recaptured revenue – a rare opportunity for New Jersey.
The Meadowlands Regional Chamber of Commerce, a strong supporter of the projects, said it was “extremely disturbed” by the news regarding the Our Turn NJ campaign.
Polling released earlier this week by Rutgers-Eagleton reinforces this voter dissatisfaction.
The leaders of a campaign that was launched just last month to drum up support for a measure to allow casino gambling in North Jersey suspended its operations on Thursday, citing grim public and internal polling data on the November 8 ballot question.
“The data, however, speaks for itself”, it added.
Some of that revenue would be funneled back to Atlantic City, which has seen a collapse in its casino market in recent years.
Mistrust in state officials and a related sense of skepticism that the new casino tax revenue would be properly spent was a significant concern for a majority of voters, the men said.
The leaders of the anti-expansion campaign, called Trenton’s Bad Bet, did not return a request for comment, and a spokesman for State Senate President Steve Sweeney, who pushed for the referendum question, declined an opportunity to comment.
If the referendum is defeated, proponents would have to wait a minimum of two years before putting it on the ballot again.
In what could be a big blow to the already shaky effort to expand casino gaming in New Jersey, the group supporting November’s ballot referendum to bring two casinos to the northern part of the state announced Thursday it has suspended its paid advertising campaign.
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Chase Brush is a former PolitickerNJ reporter and NJ Spotlight editorial intern from North Jersey.
