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Editorial: Presidential politics derailed off-reservation casino bid

To understand how Illinois dodged a large fiscal musket bullet shaped like a roulette ball, you’d have to understand what Wisconsin Gov. Scott “Scooter” Walker wants more than anything else.

He wants to be President of the United States.

To achieve that improbable goal, he has to play nicely with very conservative primary voters in Iowa. They don’t like the morally tainted expansion of state-sponsored gambling and told him so.

So his rejection of a new $800 million gambling palace just over the border from Lake County made them happy.

Also very happy are the Potawatomi and Ho-Chunk tribes who run casinos in Wisconsin under a compact that pays them if any new tribal gambling halls hurt their incomes. A new casino in Kenosha certainly would have done that. So they fought it with millions of advertising dollars.