HARRISBURG — Gaming and playing interests whose industries have been eyed for brand spanking new or greater taxes in 2025 have spent $8.1 million and counting within the lead-up to Pennsylvania’s May main.
The spending was completed by three teams, and far of it has been targeting impartial advertisements that both reward or savage the data of Republican incumbents and their main challengers in three key state Senate races.
The incumbents — Lisa Baker of Luzerne County, Camera Bartolotta of Washington County, and Chris Gebhard of Lebanon County — are both in caucus management or intently allied with leaders, typically voting for state funds offers and different compromises. A loss by any can be a blow to the chamber’s leaders, who’re picked in closed-door elections, and sure transfer the caucus’ ideological middle additional to the appropriate, 4 Capitol observers famous.
“It’s about particular interests being advised no, and the one path to retribution is to manage the subsequent era of Senate management,” one Capitol lobbyist given anonymity to discuss internal caucus politics told Spotlight PA.
During last year’s 120-plus-day budget impasse, legislative leadership weighed taxing slot-like skill games, and as the stalemate dragged on, raising taxes on sports betting companies.
Neither policy came to fruition. But as another June 30 budget deadline looms, the divided legislature will once again have to find new revenue to fund programs like transit, education, and healthcare. Gaming and gambling taxes remain an attractive alternative to a broad hike.
A super PAC aligned with sports betting spent roughly 60% of the total identified by Spotlight PA to support the Republican incumbents, at least one of whom, Gebhard, was publicly thanked last year by the Sports Betting Alliance for opposing raising taxes.
The rest was financed by a skill games developer through a network of conservative political groups known for attacking Republican incumbents in primary elections.
Skill games have popped up in hundreds of Pennsylvania bars, taverns, corner stores, and social clubs over the past decade. The industry and its boosters say the devices do not meet the definition of gambling under state law and that revenues from the machines help keep small businesses afloat.
Opponents argue skill games are functionally gambling, and carry the same social cost without any regulation or taxation on their revenues. Plus, by competing with casinos’ bottom lines, the machines have earned the enmity of a powerful lobby. Despite years of debate, lawmakers have repeatedly failed to pass a bill to either ban or regulate and tax the devices. A case to decide their legality is currently before the state Supreme Court.
Once key funders of Republican campaign coffers, the skills industry turned on state Senate Republicans last year due to a dispute over the best approach to regulation. GOP leadership said attacks on incumbents amounted to being “bullied.”
Bartolotta, a three-term incumbent who has faced attacks from the industry for months, told Spotlight PA this week that backers are “trying to take the Senate of Pennsylvania hostage” through campaign spending.
Sports betting companies are newcomers to the scene, following the meteoric rise of the industry since a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court ruling tossed out a federal ban on the practice. Pennsylvania legalized sports betting soon after, and the commonwealth’s citizens now place billions of dollars in wagers each year.
The industry is currently taxed at 36%. Near the end of last year’s budget impasse, lawmakers discussed raising that levy to boost state aid to public transit systems, a key sticking point in closed-door talks. However, the industry caught wind and launched a successful lobbying push to kill the measure. A budget deal passed without an increase — and a sports betting group ran ads soon after thanking Gebhard and state Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman (R., Indiana) for “standing with PA sports fans and against raising taxes.”
Spotlight PA’s analysis focuses on spending by PACs and super PACs reported on state campaign finance filings that the newsroom independently identified as connected to the gaming and gambling industries. The analysis does not account for the millions of dollars that have been spent directly by candidates, the state Republican Party in coordination with candidates, or other independent groups hoping to influence the primaries.
Pennsylvania’s opaque campaign finance laws make it difficult to track political spending in real time. Most of the money flowed through super PACs, political committees that can accept money directly from corporate coffers and nonprofits that can shield their donors as long as they spend those dollars without communicating with their preferred candidate.
Such independent spending is harder to track. Still, state and federal records provide some insight.
Win for Pennsylvania, a super PAC, has spent more than $5 million this year, Spotlight PA’s analysis found. Some of those dollars paid for ads to sell voters on the conservative bona fides of Baker, Bartolotta, and Gebhard, or to attack their opponents.
Win is part of a network of super PACs funded entirely by sports betting interests — Fanatics Sports Book, DraftKings, and FanDuel, per Federal Election Commission records.
Those three firms have donated at least $46 million to a group called Win for America as of March 31 — all of the money it has collected. Win for America gives money to the American Conservative Fund, which in turn has given Win for Pennsylvania all of the money in its coffers, $5 million. All three committees were registered within a few weeks of each other at the same northern Virginia address and to the same individual.
Moving money from one organization or PAC to another makes it harder to track where that cash comes from, said Aaron McKean, a senior legal counsel at the Washington, D.C.-based Campaign Legal Center, which studies election and ethics laws. That means, he said, a “less informed vote at the end of the day. And that’s a real problem for our democracy.”
He called for Pennsylvania to adopt laws like those in Arizona and Alaska, which require groups to disclose the original source of their funding. The laws have been upheld by federal courts.
As sports betting interests spend to support Baker, Bartolotta, and Gebhard, groups backed by skill games are putting up cash to defeat them.
Citizens Alliance, a conservative political group, has funded high-profile, successful primaries against GOP incumbents in recent years, including against the chairs of both chambers’ appropriations committees in 2022. The group asks its candidates to sign a public pledge to back medical, education, and economic “freedom” and oppose new taxes or expansions of government powers.
It spends through both a political committee and a super PAC. The former has raised a little more than $1.5 million since the start of the new year — 98% of which came from executives for Pace-O-Matic, a major skill games developer and distributor, and the firm’s PAC, Operators for Skill.
Citizens Alliance’s state super PAC was entirely funded by a federal super PAC with the same name. Records show the federal super PAC raised $1.3 million this year — about two-thirds of its total funding — from Pace-O-Matic. The state super PAC then bought ads attacking the records of Baker, Bartolotta, and Gebhard, or gave money directly to their primary challengers: behavioral health specialist Tyler Meyers, masonry business owner Al Buchtan, and professional cowboy Clovis Crane, respectively.
Cliff Maloney, CEO of Citizens Alliance, previously told Spotlight PA that it and unspecified “partners are working to hold Senate Republicans accountable that proposed a new tax on certain small businesses.”
The dynamics of the primary have frustrated incumbents and challengers alike.
“Seeing the sheer power of third-party money, we probably should be having a conversation on: ‘Is this a positive for the system and the people of Pennsylvania?’” said Gebhard, who has introduced a bill opposed by the skill games industry.
Meyers, the 32-year-old counselor and U.S. Army veteran running against Baker in Northeastern Pennsylvania, told Spotlight PA, “If it was up to me, I’d take money out of politics entirely. It’s ridiculous that for someone like me to run, I have to get lucky with someone like [Citizens Alliance] being willing to fund my campaign in the first place. I’m a working-class man.”
Whether the outcome of the primary elections will have any impact on future legislation is unclear. Regardless of the outcome on Tuesday, the skill games industry will lose goodwill with Republicans, multiple Capitol observers said. They also noted gaming deals require bipartisan buy-in to pass.
Gebhard said his door is still open to the industry, but he expects the state Supreme Court’s ruling on the machines’ legality to lay the groundwork for whatever comes next.
Mike Barley, head of government relations for Pace-O-Matic, said the primary’s results won’t be the “epitaph” for the industry.
“I believe that the primary election is but another chapter in this ongoing skill game issue, one we hope ends with common sense legislation,” Barley told Spotlight PA in a text message. “Recognizing that is always in the eye of the beholder.
Democratic primary also targeted
Money linked to skill games isn’t just contributing to Republican warfare. In another state Senate district, a newly formed PAC is attacking the Democratic establishment’s preferred candidate in a primary that will determine who faces a Republican incumbent who supports skill games.
Democrats see the 16th state Senate District, which includes the Allentown suburbs and northern Bucks County, as a must-win to flip the chamber.
Two mailers funded by the PAC Protecting Our Democracy attacked Bucks County social studies teacher and school board member Bradley Merkl-Gump, and encouraged voters to pick Lehigh County Controller Mark Pinsley.
“You don’t have to settle for the hand-picked candidate of the corporate, Israel-first Democratic party boss and insiders,” one mailer said.
The mailer also featured a picture of Bucks County Democratic Party Chair Steve Santarsiero, a state senator who is Jewish, with an Israeli flag under his face (the image appears to be pulled from his Facebook). In a news conference Thursday, Santarsiero called the mailer antisemitic for saying he is “Israel first,” which he said implies he has dual loyalties.
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Protecting Our Democracy registered with the state in mid-April, and the Pennsylvania Department of State had not received its campaign finance report as of Thursday morning. Committees had until May 8 to mail their reports and are not required to file electronically.
“Reports are uploaded into the database as soon as possible, but there may be some lag time,” a department spokesperson said.
Without a report, it’s impossible to say who funded or produced the mailer. However, the PAC is chaired by Joseph Calla, an executive at Harrisburg-based Capital Vending, which supplies equipment, including skill games, to bars and taverns. (Calla did not respond to requests for comment.)
Calla has given $156,000 to Operators for Skill, the industry’s main political committee in Pennsylvania, since 2017, and wrote a PennLive op-ed in January arguing the games are good for his business and the restaurant industry, while endorsing a bill that skill games interests support. He also took part in a promotional campaign for Pace-O-Matic.
Republican Jarrett Coleman, first elected to represent the 16th District in 2022, wrote an op-ed supportive of industry-favored tax rates and rules last summer as his caucus grappled with skill games regulation. His campaign has received $426,000 from the Operators for Skill PAC, plus more from industry executives.
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