The Stakes Are High in O.C. Card Club Votes : Gambling: Casino backers tout huge payoffs to cities. Foes, citing problems in L.A. County, warn of bad deal.

BELL —  Even scandal and financial catastrophe aren’t enough to swear this small, blue-collar city off gambling once and for all.

Bell, just southeast of downtown Los Angeles, has lost nearly $1.9 million on two failed card clubs. It has seen two of its top city officials convicted in a poker profit-skimming scam. And the owner of its last club has disappeared.

Yet even now, city leaders--like hard-luck poker players drawing to an inside straight--are hoping a new investor will emerge to give Bell another shot at the gaming business.

“The bottom line,” said Bell Councilman George Bass, “is that we’ll take a chance on anything we can get because we’re desperate for revenues. We don’t have any choice. We need money.”

As Orange County faces two municipal elections on June 8 and a third proposal in Anaheim to legalize card-club gambling, the “Temporarily Closed” signs taped to the doors of Bell’s ornate Regency Card Club and Casino could serve as road maps to the riches and perils that may await the county.

A bruising court battle forced the 1980 closure of Orange County’s last major card parlor, the Camelot-Anaheim. Now, some backers of card clubs predict a return to the heady days of Camelot as competing investors seek a stake in Cypress, Stanton and Anaheim in what is their biggest push into Orange County in more than a dozen years.

Orange County offers more than simply an opportunity to attract new card players. Within the county’s borders, industry officials see the potential to tap into a market that is at once steeped in wealth, fed by tourism and populated by many of the same Asian groups that have fueled the recent gambling boom in Los Angeles County.

And for some cash-strapped Orange County cities facing both recession and huge state funding cuts, the lure of potential millions in annual card revenue appears to be a seeming economic jackpot ready for the taking.

In Cypress, backers of a proposal to put a card club at the Los Alamitos Race Course are predicting that their plan would generate 2,500 jobs and up to $12 million a year for city coffers--this for a city with a general fund budget of just $17 million annually. In exchange for licensing card clubs, cities take a share of their revenue--generally between 10% and 15%.

In Stanton, proponents of a club at the Indoor Swap Meet are vowing new public revenue of up to $3 million a year--or more than a third of the city’s general fund budget today. And in Anaheim, investors say their still-tentative club plan should generate millions each year for that city as well.

But some industry officials rail against what they say is the naivete of believing that a spate of new clubs can all be instant money makers. They insist there simply aren’t enough gamblers in the area to keep them all open.

“There’s a lot of oversell out there,” said Dick Floyd, a former Gardena assemblyman who heads the California Club Card Assn. in Sacramento.

“Operators are trying to open in any number of places, and they’re promising (cities) millions of dollars in revenues,” Floyd said. “But it ain’t going to happen overnight. Everyone’s looking to get rich, but you don’t just open the door and watch the money come in.”

Law enforcement leaders, meanwhile, warn of hidden pitfalls that could scare off even the most brash of gamblers: money laundering, extortion, armed robbery, prostitution, tax evasion and organized crime.

“If they’re such a good neighbor,” Orange County Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi says of Los Angeles card clubs, “let’s leave them in the neighboring county.”

About 300 card clubs of all sizes now dot the state, offering gamblers the chance to bet a few dollars or a few thousand dollars at everything from “hold ‘em” poker to complicated Asian games such as pai gow and pan.

There are no slot machines allowed in these casinos, no roulette wheels, no craps tables or other games of pure chance that require players to bet blindly and then pray that their bets pay off.

Under California law, card clubs can offer only games deemed to involve a measure of skill, and players bet only against each other--not against the house. The club makes its money--more than $80 million a year at the biggest casinos--by renting seats for games and serving food and drinks.

These are not friendly games among old poker pals.

On one recent evening at the Commerce Casino--a top Los Angeles County club whose investors are now pitching the club in Anaheim--the tension was plain through the clouds of smoke that billowed above dozens of card tables.

One bettor yelped with joy over and over again as he hit a winning streak in the “Asian room”--so loudly, in fact, that a club employee had to quiet him because he was bothering less fortunate players.

A drunk poker player, feeding off a steady diet of free Budweisers served at his table, began harassing other players with taunts and shouts, and an annoyed dealer threatened to call security when he grabbed her hand as she dealt his cards. Finally, other players left his table altogether.

A burly, bearded man became angry when he suspected another player of violating betting limits at his table. “Don’t (mess) with me! Just don’t (mess) with me!” the man yelled, prompting a club employee to intervene.

Such flare-ups are testimony to an atmosphere in California clubs that stands in contrast to Las Vegas, insists John Bramble, who retired last week as chief administrative officer for the city of Bell, population 34,000, and who helped the city try to revive its struggling Regency club.

In Las Vegas, Bramble maintained, people of all walks of life are attracted by a wide range of shows, recreation and luxury hotels for what often amounts to a leisurely vacation.

In California casinos, he said, the focus is almost exclusively on gambling. “It’s serious stuff for these people. It’s not fun. You don’t see people in California clubs smiling, because it’s very serious business. It’s a living for these people.”

But one industry insider said card clubs are working hard to counter many of the negative images that surround their business--and the effort to put a card club in the huge Anaheim market, dominated by Disneyland, is a key element of that plan.

“You can’t live in the past. The old idea of the back-room pool-hall club, with the low-hung lights and a long bar with a bunch of females with dresses hiked up to their navels--that’s all history,” said Russ Harris, a Newport Beach businessman who sits on the Commerce Casino board of directors and serves as a liaison to the city of Anaheim on its current proposal.

The Commerce Casino hopes to capitalize on Anaheim’s family image by bringing an entertainment complex and card club to the city, Harris said.

“It’s obviously a city more identified with the tourist trade than any other city in Orange County, and clean, adult entertainment in Anaheim makes sense--because of Disney,” he said.

A secondary motive for the Commerce Casino’s move into Orange County, Harris said, is the potential market in the burgeoning Asian community.

Asian gambling has become the financial backbone of Los Angeles County’s card rooms. When profits started to dwindle in the mid-1980s, clubs went to court and--over the objections of state officials--won the right to offer games like pai gow, an ancient Chinese game played with domino-like tiles.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars can ride on a single hand in Asian games, and profits soared for Los Angeles clubs as they began to offer more and more varieties. At the Bicycle Club in Bell Gardens--the biggest and most well-known of California’s clubs--Asian games now generate 60% of its revenue, said General Manager George Hardie.

If successful in their Anaheim venture, Harris said, Commerce Casino officials expect to draw Asian gamblers from the Westminister-Garden Grove area, who are now wooed to Los Angeles by frequent gambling advertisements in Vietnamese newspapers and other ethnic publications in Orange County. More than 185,000 Asians live in the county.

“There’s no question that if you give (Asians) a place to play and you’re more convenient, you’re going to take some of that trade,” Harris said.

But some fear fallout from the push to expand the Asian market. Westminster Councilman Tony Lam said he fears bringing the clubs closer to this area will only make his community’s gambling problems worse.

“It is a dangerous situation to have the card club close to home, within walking distance or bicycling distance” from his community, Lam said. “The Vietnamese community really loves to get addicted to gambling. They use their hard-earned money for gambling. It is a fact of life. A lot of families break up. I know a lot of problems like that. I am totally against it.”

Another card club campaign has already produced charges of racism aimed at Asians.

The charges were prompted by flyers distributed as part of a card club campaign in West Hollywood, where voters will also go to the polls June 8 to decide on legalized gambling. The flyers, financed by the Bicycle Club, used Chinese characters to warn of the dangers of “Asian gangs” and gambling-related crime.

But community members quickly denounced the flyers for spreading racist imagery.

At the heart of most arguments against legalized card clubs is the fear of increased crime, but opponents differ wildly on that emotional issue.

The Los Angeles County card-club industry has been plagued by allegations of corruption and political kickbacks in recent years.

Hardest hit has been the Bicycle Club. It was temporarily closed and partially seized by federal regulators in 1990 because of its connection to a drug-laundering scandal in Florida. Last year, the Internal Revenue Service levied a $4.6-million fine against the club for unreported cash transactions.

But police officials in the City of Commerce, Gardena and Bell Gardens--home to card clubs that bring in millions in city revenue--all said in interviews that they see little connection between crime and their local clubs.

“Probably the biggest problem we have is the traffic,” said Bell Gardens Police Chief Don Barclift.

“The calls for service are very few, much less than we anticipated,” he said. “The Bicycle Club’s probably the safest spot in town, due to the security presence there. You wouldn’t hesitate to bring your kids there for dinner.”

Officials in the City of Commerce offer statistics to back up the same assertion in their city: There were a total of 55 violent and serious crimes in the area around the Commerce Casino in 1992, compared with 399 around the Commerce Center, a major shopping mall. There were no murders or rapes reported at the club, city officials say, and the biggest problem came in the area of grand theft--with 28 reports.

Sandra Sutphen, a political science professor who is now working for card club proponents in Cypress, said those figures are borne out by a study she conducted on the issue.

Comparing crime rates at five Los Angeles County cities to card clubs to those at 15 cities that don’t have gambling, Sutphen said in an interview that she found no relationship between clubs and crime.

“Any difference in crime between the two types of cities happens by chance,” said Sutphen, who appears on a pro-club video that has been distributed to thousands of voters in Cypress as part of the campaign there.

But critics maintain that such statistics fail to take into account gambling-related crimes that take place away from the clubs--such as “follow-home” robberies.

Orange County has seen rising numbers of follow-home incidents in recent years, as robbers target players at Los Angeles clubs who appear to be winning and then follow the players once they leave the club. In one case last year, a San Juan Capistrano man called police on his cellular car phone to say he feared he was being followed. He was then robbed of $3,500 cash and killed.

Several top law enforcement officials in Orange County have spoken out against legalized card clubs, and Dist. Atty. Capizzi--who helped make his mark in the 1980s prosecuting several corruption cases that grew out of the Commerce Casino--has been particularly acrimonious in his opposition.

The district attorney said in an interview that he does not believe it is possible for anyone to run a “clean” card club that remains free of the influence of loan sharks, extortionists, prostitutes and other criminal types. The huge amounts of cash changing hands each minute, 24 hours a day, he said, pose an instant and irresistible lure for “undesirable elements.”

Citing the folk tale of the devil and Daniel Webster, Capizzi said: “You sell your soul to the devil, and you’re eventually going to pay the price.”

In an oft-cited report last year on the dangers of card clubs, San Diego County Dist. Atty. Edwin L. Miller Jr. chronicled the history of crime and corruption in California clubs. The millions of dollars in public taxes generated by these clubs, Miller concluded, “come at the expense of public safety and have opened the doors . . . to organized crime, prostitution, loan-sharking, money laundering, extortion and robbery.”

Even some within the industry acknowledge the tremendous temptation for corruption in the gaming business.

“Human nature is terrible sometimes, and greed is a big thing,” said George Anthony, the 80-year-old owner of the Eldorado Card Club in Gardena. “Most of the owners, all they’re looking for is a dollar, not a proper running place. That’s what brings us the trouble. I can’t stand some of it.”

That risk, say some residents, isn’t worth the money clubs may bring.

“I would not for the life of me want to be raising a child in a city with a card club,” said Betty Amelung, 58, a retired clerk who lives in a Stanton mobile home park. “Let’s make a good name for our city. I don’t think you do that bringing in something like gambling.”

In Stanton and Cypress, such vitriolic arguments have polarized communities as activists on both sides of the emotional issue do battle with speeches, signs, flyers, videos and marches to sway public opinion.

Los Alamitos Race Course co-owner Lloyd Arnold, one of the backers of the Cypress proposal, has countered anti-gambling attacks by sweetening his offer to include a $1-million scholarship fund for local students. The proposal comes atop the jobs, city revenue and other perks that backers are promising.

Arnold’s own financial security seems uncertain, however. Records and interviews show that he owes $350,000 in past-due debts to a Long Beach church, a state regulatory agency and a local harness racing group.

In Stanton, meanwhile, developer Ard Keuilian has also promised to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to nonprofit groups in the area as part of his attempt to start a card club at his local swap meet. But there, too, the offer has been met with scorn and skepticism from some residents.

As the campaigns in Cypress and Stanton wind to a close, it will be left to the voters to sort through the maze of arguments on the morality, safety and economics of gambling--and decide what’s right for them and their cities.

“You can do all the fighting and hollering and yelling and sign-carrying you want,” said Jane Wozniak, a longtime Cypress activist who supports the club proposal. “But when it comes time to go into the voting booth, people will vote with their hearts and minds. If it passes, great. If it doesn’t, at least it is the will of the city.”

Times correspondent Willson Cummer contributed to this report.