”When I talk to my old colleagues in the legislature I’m dumbfounded why anyone would oppose this,” McKinney said in the RCI conference room Thursday. Whether a new infusion of high-profile supporters swings the balance in the General Assembly and wins over Lamont remains to be seen. New Haven Mayor Toni Harp and Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim have been part of the effort, and Herbert was on hand from the start. MGM has had powerful allies since before it presented its plan at the Seaview development site in September, 2017, on the harbor and directly across the Yellow Mill River from Steel Point, where RCI is building a massive, multi-use development including as many as 2,000 apartments.

“We discovered that there are a lot of people who are like-minded,” said Clinton, long the point man in Connecticut for MGM. The idea, Clinton said, is to turn the effort into a group fighting for a commercial casino based on open bids, presumably in southeastern Connecticut - not just supporters of MGM’s plan. The coalition, which will grow further, includes former state Senate Republican Leader John McKinney of Fairfield Mickey Herbert, a longtime local civic leader and business executive who recently ended a stint as CEO of the Bridgeport Regional Business Council and Richard Velky, chief of the Kent-based Schaghticoke Tribe, which has been trying to regain federal recognition since it had the status granted briefly, then taken away in 2005. Looking at the big picture, MGM senior vice president Uri Clinton said, “This is not just MGM speaking into the wind.

That bill, with more newly elected co-sponsors coming, has sticky legal problems - Attorney General George Jepsen called it a bad idea that could leave Connecticut in the lurch - and MGM will rightly call East Windsor a quagmire. To break that logjam, Osten and 14 other eastern Connecticut lawmakers have rolled out a bill under which the federal nod wouldn’t be needed. Department of the Interior has refused to approve a change in the tribes’ agreement with the state. * Progress at the tribes’ planned East Windsor casino remains stalled and in legal limbo as the U.S.

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