A victory for internet gambling as Jim Leach gets voted out | IXGAMES

In an extremely close race, challenger Dave Loebsack pulled off what may have been the biggest surprise of Iowas election night, unseating long-time U.S. Rep. Jim Leach for election to the 2nd District congressional seat. Republican Leach, 64, has served 30 years in Congress since his election as 1st District representative in 1976. In 2001 he moved to Iowa City, which is in the 2nd District. Early this morning with 281 out of 326 precincts reporting statewide, Loebsack led with 51.37 percent of the vote to Leachs 48.63 percent, according to the Iowa Secretary of States office. Leachs campaign manager, Gary Grant, said that despite the close race, and regardless of the final tally, Leach had no plans to challenge the race. And Leach’s defeat was a huge victory for online gambling.  Leach originated the idea of disrupting online gambling for Americans by attacking the financial channels used to fund gambling accounts. Over the last two weeks, must of the focus by the billion dollar online gambling community has been to unseat incumbent Arizona Republican Senator Jon Kyl, who co-sponsored the most recent piece of internet gambling legislation.  Kyl, who has served Arizona for over 20 years in both the House and Senate, ended up in a tight race when compared to his last two landslide victories.  But in the end, his challenger, Jim Pederson, was viewed as “too inexperienced”. Kyl’s win is not necessarily a loss to the online gambling community however as the Democrats have assumed control of the House and quite possibly the Senate. The subject of internet gambling prohibition has left a bad taste in the mouths of Democrats who now view this as a Republican self-agenda.  Jon Kyl and retiring Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R) slipped the piece of legislation into an unrelated “port security” bill during the final hours of Congress voting before Election Day recess.  Democrats expressed outrage. Ultimately the bill signed into law as part of the Port Security Act turned out to be nothing more than a watered down version of Jim Leach’s legislation.  Leach had already vowed to continue his fight against online gambling if re-elected.  Kyl has not said much but any attempts by Jon Kyl to do so would almost certainly be rebuffed by the Democratic majority.  A grass roots effort calling itself the Poker Players Against Jon Kyl notified hundreds and thousands of Arizona online gamers about Kyl’s attempts to prohibit online poker and other forms of internet gambling during the 15 days leading up to Elections.  Arizona is believed to encompass one of the largest online gambling player bases.  The impact of this campaign is not yet known since Kyl enjoyed a commanding lead just prior to his online gambling prohibition passing into law.  By Election Day, that lead had dwindled into single digits. By late Tuesday night, Kyl had 53 percent of the vote while Pederson received about 44 percent with 69 percent of precincts reporting. Libertarian candidate Richard Mack, who ran on an anti-tax, pro-gun rights platform, received 3 percent.