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The defeat of the racino plan shatters high hopes for an economic revival.

BY JOSIE HUANG, Staff Writer November 7, 2007

CALAIS — Pizza boxes lay empty on tables. News crews had left nearly an hour before. Still, leaders of the Passamaquoddy Tribe waited at the Calais Motor Inn, hoping for good news from the precincts that still had to report their ballot returns.

More than 7,000 votes. That’s what the tribe needed to be able to build the gambling facility it had sought for more than a decade. That’s what people in Calais, where the facility would likely have been built along with a harness-racing track, had hoped would revive their sluggish economy.

Those votes didn’t come. The referendum failed 52 percent to 48 percent. So, just minutes shy of midnight, the leaders conceded defeat.

“People weren’t ready for a racino in Washington County,” said Lt. Gov. Joseph Socobasin of Indian Township.

The outcome was just as upsetting for many residents of Calais, where nearly 80 percent of voters had approved the ballot question.

Hopes had been high: City leaders had voted to host the racino and high-stakes bingo. The tribe had an option on 700 acres and was planning to find investors to help buy the land for $650,000.

Many thought the fact that the Hollywood Slots racino already had been built in Bangor would improve their chances. “This is a devastating blow to the community,” said John Marchese, the owner of the Calais Motor Inn, who looked morose as he stood behind the bar. “I can’t believe the rest of the state doesn’t understand where we are.”

More than 1,000 people – about 40 percent of registered voters – went to the city’s sole polling station Tuesday, an unusually high turnout for an off-year election, said City Clerk Theresa Porter.

In the converted brick firehouse, teachers, carpenters, mill workers and college students slogged out of the rain and into the brightness of the fluorescent lights, each saying they had come to cast a vote for change.

It was not a politician that had captured their hopes and imaginations, but what they saw as the promise of economic salvation.

Earlier this year, Russell Hill, 51, watched as 150 co-workers were laid off from the Domtar mill in nearby Baileyville. Many, he said, have moved to other parts of the state, and others are receiving unemployment.

Right now at least, a racino represented the best chance of reviving a local economy no longer able to rely on manufacturing jobs, Hill said.

“Gov. John Baldacci promised things that would be better than a casino before the last election,” Hill said. “But it hasn’t been nothing at all.”

Some residents hoped the racino would bring fun and excitement to the area.

“There’s nothing to do around here but rent videos,” said George Long, a retired collector for a credit bureau.

Throughout town, signs urging voters to vote “Yes on Question 1” hung in the windows of the steak house, Chinese restaurant and pubs.

Dean Frost, who runs a pet supplies and grooming shop downtown with his wife, said he was eager for the referendum to pass.

He and his wife said maybe they could board dogs who accompany their owners on trips to the racino.

“This is not something Washington County wants to do because we’re greedy,” Frost said as he clipped a 9-year-old Lhasa apso. “We just want to survive like the rest of the state.”

Sara Cameron, 74, a retired hospital cook, was among the voters interviewed who did not want a racino in town. A strong opponent of gambling, she cast her ballot, then accosted City Manager Diane Barnes, who was visiting the polling station. Cameron told the manager she didn’t appreciate the fact that Barnes had appeared on a television newscast the night before and said most residents support a racino.

“I think it will tear the city apart,” Cameron said after her conversation with Barnes.

At Calais Motor Inn later Tuesday night, Wade Lola was shaking his head in dismay long before the leaders admitted defeat. “I’m disappointed with the whole outcome,” said...