March 26, 2003
Doyle pal tried to horn in on casino deal
by Spivak & Bice
Milwaukee Jounal Sentinal 

When Gov. Jim Doyle struck a deal with the Potawatomi last month, he did more than give the tribe an ironclad grip on metro Milwaukee's gambling business.

The guv also drove a stake through the heart of a proposal quietly being negotiated to bring a $100 million-plus MGM Mirage casino complex to Kenosha - a deal that would have placed a competitor between the Potawatomi's Menomonee Valley casino and the Chicago market.

As recently as last month, multiple sources tell us, MGM Mirage officials, Menominee tribal representatives and Kenosha power-broker Dennis Troha met at a Chicago hotel to hash out what role, if any, to give Troha in the deal.

The casino company and the northern Wisconsin tribe had already been in talks for several months to discuss jointly putting an off-reservation gambling hall in Kenosha. Ken Rosevear, a heavy-hitter at MGM Mirage, visited the reservation last fall to put on a dog-and-pony show about the company for legislative leaders, said Menominee Chairwoman Joan Delabreau.

Though we'll never know for certain, it's a safe bet this casino would have been huge - glitzy Vegas firms like MGM Mirage don't do anything on the cheap. The $4 billion corporation operates 15 casinos worldwide, including the MGM Grand, The Mirage, Treasure Island and Bellagio.

"Negotiations were moving along," MGM Mirage exec Alan Feldman said last week of his firm's talks with the Menominee. "Things were looking fairly positive."

But the negotiations stalled over Troha's involvement.

Troha, a leading partner in the failed effort to put a tribal casino at Dairyland Greyhound Park a couple of years ago, became a Doyle pal when he, along with fellow wheeler-dealer Joe Madrigrano Jr., directed $160,000 to the Democratic governor last year. Troha declined to comment.

Several sources said Menominee leaders insisted that Troha & Co. get a piece of the action, arguing that his political clout was needed in Madison because Doyle can veto an off-reservation deal. But MGM Mirage balked, saying it wanted no more partners.

Sources with knowledge of the February meeting that took place at a hotel near O'Hare Airport said Troha argued forcefully that his investor group get included.

"Things got uglier and uglier," one source said, explaining that Troha said his local and state ties would be vital for what would surely be a controversial deal.

The source summed up Troha's message: "If you're coming into Kenosha, you have to know who would have the baseball bat - and I know how to use the baseball bat."

A couple of weeks later, that spat became irrelevant, when Doyle disclosed that he'd sold the Potawatomi a gaming monopoly covering a 50-mile radius from its Milwaukee casino.

"It made our conversations moot," Feldman said.

Left unclear is what role the Vegas interloper had on the Doyle administration's talks with the Potawatomi.

The tribe clearly wouldn't want MGM Mirage standing between it and the nation's third-biggest market, and with lobbyist and ex-Gov. Marty Schreiber in both its and Doyle's inner circles, the Potawatomi had the means to get its point across.

And, don't forget, during the final days of last year's gubernatorial campaign, the tribe dropped $200,000 into the national Democratic Party to help Doyle win.

Schreiber claimed last week that he was in the dark about the MGM Mirage talks until after the Potawatomi signed its compact. Maybe he should have asked the guy on the other side of the negotiating table, Marc Marotta, Doyle's point man on gambling.

Marotta acknowledged that he had heard that the Menominee tribe was working with MGM Mirage on a Kenosha deal. But he said that wasn't the reason the state agreed to a 50-mile exclusivity clause in Potawatomi's deal.

Rather, he said, it was intended to keep the Potawatomi happy by preventing anybody from trampling on their lucrative turf. Now, the only way for somebody to enter the market is to reimburse the tribe the $77.6 million that it has agreed to pay for its monopoly.

Would MGM Mirage be willing to cough up that hefty franchise fee?

"As I said," Feldman noted, "it's moot."

A version of this story appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on March 30, 2003.