Not all of the political allies of the online gambling industry belong to the Democrats. Several prominent Republicans have been hard at work fighting the good fight as well. Take for instance, Congressman Pete Sessions, a Republican from Texas. He introduced HR 6663. The main goals of this bill are to better define the relationship between the UIGEA and online sports betting, pushing mainly for the Act to focus specifically on the online sports betting sector. Representing the 32nd Congressional District of Texas, Sessions scored a convincing win over Democratic candidate Eric Robertson by 57% to 40%.

Another online gambling advocate who does not play for the Democratic team is Texan Congressman Ron Paul. He co-authored HR 5767, the original version of the Payments System Protection Act, along with Barney Frank. Although the bill was defeated in Committee, an amendment has been added and things are now looking even more optimistic that it will find its way all the way through congress.

Republican Jon Porter and Democrat Shelley Berkley, Representatives of Nevada have previously introduced legislation dedicated to the study of online gambling. Berkley worked to push through HR 2140, along with 73 co-sponsors near the end of the 2008 Congressional session. That is the most sponsors ever for any internet gambling-related bill. Fortunately, Berkley won the race 67% to 28%, but things did not have such a great outcome for Porter. He lost to Democrat Tina Titus in a very close race 47% to 42%. So overall, this race brought some positive developments for the online gambling industry and also, but with less frequency, a few negative effects as advocates of the industry lost their races.

Tags: elections, legislation, online gambling industry

This entry was posted on Friday, November 7th, 2008 at 8:05 pm and is filed under Online Gambling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.