Nov. 17, 2002 
Cherokee political donations, clout grow
Environmentalists, other tribes worry as strength increases
ANNA GRIFFIN
Staff Writer

Since opening five years ago, the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians' massive mountain casino has allowed tribal leaders to offer their people improved schools, better health care and basic amenities such as a real grocery store and concrete driveways.

Gambling has also given the Cherokees rising political clout in Raleigh and Washington.

Like tribes across the country, the Eastern Band is using its new wealth to woo state and federal leaders through campaign contributions and astute political maneuvering.

"The last census reported 4 million Native Americans -- 2 million on reservations. That's tiny, all things considered," said Jacqueline Johnson, executive director of the National Congress of American Indians.

"The politicians aren't going to come looking for you unless you show them you're engaged. That's what we're showing them now."

Not everyone is happy the Eastern Band, long ignored by government, has become a political player.

Other Carolinas tribes believe Cherokee leaders have opposed their efforts at recognition. Environmentalists fear the tribe's federal friends are helping it to circumvent the regulatory process. And campaign-finance reformers worry that the Eastern Band, occupants of a 56,000-acre reservation 180 miles west of Charlotte, have an unfair advantage in the high-stakes game of political fund raising.

Tribal leaders say they're simply making up for lost time. Through October, the Cherokees had contributed at least $120,000 to 2002 political campaigns, according to campaign-finance reports.

That included donations to two dozen N.C. General Assembly candidates, said Eastern Band Chief Leon Jones.

Tribe leaders do not use casino profits for donations. Rather, gaming profits allow them to take money from other pots.

"For many, many years, the Native Americans have been at the mercy of the political machine and didn't have the resources to affect our destiny," Jones said. "Now we do."

Recognition in 1868

Today's Cherokees descend from a huge nation that once covered the Southeast but split when the federal government forced tribes westward in the 1830s.The Eastern Band won federal recognition in 1868.

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park opened in 1934 and brought tourists to the reservation, located along its southern edge. But it failed to deliver a lasting economic boom.

In the 1990 Census, a quarter of all Eastern Band Cherokees lived in poverty. Winter unemployment on the reservation, a collection of unpaved mountain roads, small homes and souvenir shops, still topped 40 percent five years ago.

Gambling changed that.

The U.S. Supreme Court approved high-stakes Indian gaming in 1987. In 1994, Gov. Jim Hunt grudgingly agreed to allow the Cherokees to open their hall.

Today, the Harrah's Cherokee Casino is 175,000-square-feet, the size of a big Wal-Mart. The casino employs 1,500 people, a third Cherokees. Tribal profits have bought garbage trucks and dialysis machines, built a new reservation library and hired firefighters.

Last year, each of the tribe's 12,500 members received $5,700 in profits.

"Even if they didn't have money to spend on donations, those jobs and the economic development potential would have made them influential," said Gibbs Knotts, a Western Carolina University political scientist. "Money helps, of course."

Donations surge

In 1990, tribes with gaming halls donated $1,750 to federal candidates and parties. Ten years later, they gave $3 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which analyzes political giving.

In 1997, American Indians gave 20 percent of contributions to Republicans. Last year, that was up to almost 40 percent.

"That's just politically smart," said N.C. Sen. Bob Carpenter, a Republican whose district includes the reservation.

There's potential for much more giving: 320 tribal casinos generated $11 billion last year.

The sweeping federal campaign-finance reform that became law this year forbids the kind of big soft money donations that have characterized tribal giving.

But the reform could strengthen tribal clout in another way: Under the new law, individual donors can't give more than $95,000 in a year.

Yet because of their special legal status, tribes can still give up to $2,000 to as many federal candidates as they want.

When the N.C. Board of Elections gave Cherokees the right to donate to state candidates this summer, they also gave the tribe unique status in the state's campaign finance code.

The tribe is both a government entity and a corporation. But unlike other governments, it can donate money. And unlike other corporations, it doesn't have to form a political action committee or report donations.

That worries some advocates of campaign-finance reform. Chief Jones says it shouldn't.

"I don't think there's any danger to the democratic system just because we happen to be a little more politically influential," the chief said. "We're not trying to hurt anyone."

But Lumbee Indian leader Milton Hunt, for example, believes the Cherokees have helped block his Eastern North Carolina tribe's quest for federal recognition.

"They've got friends in Washington," he said this summer. "And they don't want to split the federal pie."

Jones said the Cherokees support recognition for tribes that meet federal standards. So far, he noted, the Lumbees haven't.

N.C. grows fond

North Carolina has gone from an unwilling party to gambling to a friend of the Cherokees.

Gov. Hunt, a casino opponent, originally agreed to let the tribe run its gaming hall for seven years. In 2000, he extended that through 2030.

Lawmakers affirmed the deal last year, allowing the tribe to double its gambling space and raise the limit on payouts from $25,000 to $150,000. In exchange, the tribe raised the minimum gambling age from 18 to 21 and promised $5 million a year to help five Western North Carolina counties.

The tribe appears to be winning an ongoing land dispute in the Smoky Mountains.

The Cherokees want to swap 200 acres around a Blue Ridge Parkway cliff face for 144 acres in the national park. They've sought the land, which includes a stretch of wetlands and archaeological finds dating back several thousand years, since the 1970s.

They originally wanted it for a golf course, but the National Park Service refused. Now the tribe says it needs the land to build three schools.

The Sierra Club and other environmental groups oppose the deal. They say the tribe can find land elsewhere, and they worry about both the impact of new construction and the precedent the deal would set.

Such transactions typically take years of public hearings, environmental studies and bureaucratic wrangling.

Yet this fall, U.S. Rep. Charles Taylor, R-N.C., of Asheville, filed a bill that would make the deal official without any further review and regardless of what the park service recommends.

Taylor is a longtime ally of the tribe and received $1,750 from it during the 2000 campaign.

"If this was any other group, we wouldn't still be discussing this," said Ted Snyder, former national head of the Sierra Club. "That's the power, or the perceived power, the Eastern Band has these days."