According to a report in today’s Los Angeles Times, Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt has a cozy relationship the city of Gardena, a suburb in Los Angeles County where the Hustler Casino generates a substantial portion of the overall revenue for the local government.
Flynt said that his experiences in Gardena are better than what he expected. "People are much more comfortable with me now than when we were first opened. If anybody's got any complaints, we're not really hearing about them, " he told the Times.
The Hustler Casino generates approximately ten percent of the city government’s overall budget, employs 500 people, and donates money to local charities and organizations. Flynt has donated thousands of dollars to local political campaigns.
"He's become a good neighbor," Gardena Mayor Terrence Terauchi, a deputy district attorney. "He's a very good businessman."
Not that everyone appreciates Flynt’s presence. Local clergy still scorn the porn magnate. A local Catholic high school accepts donations from a competing casino, but not from Hustler.
Father Sal Pilato, principal of Catholic Junipero Serra High School, acknowledged that the school could use the money. "But I don't want the Hustler name associated with a Catholic school," he said.
Native American tribes are hoping that voters will have the same reaction to the Flynt and Hustler names as Pilato. The tribes dubbed a November ballot measure that would end their monopoly on slot machines in California, or force them to pay 25 percent tax on revenue, as the “Larry Flynt gambling proposition.”
The ballot measure, funded in part by Flynt, would license 30,000 slots for the card clubs and racetracks, 1000 of which would got the Hustler Casino.
The Hustler Casino is a card club where customer’s bet against each other as opposed to betting against the house as they would in Las Vegas. Hustler earns money by charging each customer a fee for playing.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has expressed an interest in allowing off-reservation casinos to have slot machines.
