Four days after Missouri lawmakers adjourned in May, a company hoping to crack open the state gambling market with video slot machines donated $200,000 to three of the proposal’s biggest boosters in the General Assembly.
Conservative Leadership for Southeast Missouri, the political action committee aligned with state Sen. Jason Bean, a Holcomb Republican, received $100,000. Bean is likely to become state Senate president pro tem in 2027.
Bean publicly championed the proposal this year, including using Senate floor time in May to showcase support among members expected to return in 2027.
The other two recipients split the remaining $100,000. Half went to 417 PAC, aligned with state Sen. Curtis Trent, a Republican from Springfield running for majority floor leader. If re-elected this year and chosen as majority leader, Trent will decide when a video lottery bill comes up for debate.
The other half went to Missouri Enterprise PAC, aligned with state Rep. Bill Hardwick, a Republican from Dixon in a four-way GOP primary for the 16th District state Senate seat. Hardwick sponsored the bill that narrowly passed the House this year.
The prize for the donor, J&J Ventures of Effingham, Illinois, is access to a retail gambling market with a potential cash handle of $10 billion and profits of $2 billion from lost wagers, split between terminal operators, retail outlets and the state.
J&J is the nation’s second-largest operator of retail gambling terminals.
The company has contributed $3.5 million to Missouri campaigns since 2015, more than half since the start of 2025, according to records of the Missouri Ethics Commission.
“We support people that support our issues,” said Andy Arnold, lobbyist for J&J. “We believe we need to play politically and campaign-wise to basically be able to have an entrance to talk to people.”
J&J Ventures isn’t the only gambling interest pouring money into Missouri legislative campaigns. A Missouri Independent analysis of campaign finance records shows that political donations from video game operators, casinos and sports betting interests exceed $4 million since the start of 2025.
Of that amount, $3.4 million went to legislative campaigns. That is about one out of every eight dollars reported by campaign committees and PACs for legislative candidates, though not all of the money is tied directly to the video lottery fight..
The Independent counted donations since Jan. 1, 2025, from video lottery operators, casino companies, sports betting interests, convenience-store interests tied to the machines and PACs primarily funded by those groups. The totals include donations to campaign committees and candidate-aligned PACs reported to the Missouri Ethics Commission.
It is illegal to tie a vote on legislation directly to a campaign contribution. But that doesn’t mean the contributions have no influence on votes, said state Sen. Lincoln Hough, a Springfield Republican leaving office this year because of term limits.
“Money talks, and both sides of this issue have money,” Hough said. “The casinos don’t want it, because they think gas station casinos are bad for their business, and the guys who have these machines that are all over the state want to legalize them.”
Political landscape
The two biggest donors — J&J Ventures and Torch Electronics — boosted their contributions since the start of 2025 by about 50% compared to the 2023-24 election cycle.
J&J Ventures has contributed $1.8 million so far, compared to $1.1 million in the previous cycle. Torch, the company that shut down its “gray market” video games in April under pressure from Attorney General Catherine Hanaway, has given $1.3 million, compared to $878,000 during the 2023-24 cycle. The casino-funded Missouri Gaming PAC has contributed $510,000, nearly triple its total from the previous cycle.
The Independent sought comment from Torch representatives on its donations but did not receive a response.
The money has gone almost exclusively to incumbents and PACs aligned with their campaigns. Only 13 current Missouri House members, including 12 not seeking re-election, reported no gambling-interest donations to their campaign or PAC since the start of 2025.
The money did not perfectly predict votes. Some lawmakers supported Hardwick’s bill despite receiving more from casino interests opposed to it, while some opponents had received more from video lottery backers.
“There’s never an ending point where people quit asking for campaign donations,” Arnold said. “There’s been multiple checks that Paladin (his lobbying firm’s PAC) has written that I know the person did not vote for us on the gaming issue. That’s fine, that’s the way the system works.”
The key to getting a video lottery bill to Gov. Mike Kehoe — the second largest recipient of gambling contributions this election cycle through his American Dream PAC — will be the Senate.
There will be at least 11 new members in 2027. Hardwick, who wants to be one of those new senators, has shepherded a bill for video lottery through the Missouri House in each of the past two years, only to see it die in the Senate.
Outgoing Senate President Pro Tem Cindy O’Laughlin, an avowed foe of the legislation, killed it this year in a select committee she chaired.
Bean is unopposed in the race for pro-tem and is not on the ballot this year. He is the Senate’s largest recipient of gambling interest donations since the start of 2025. His campaign and PAC have reported $209,294 in donations.
When he used the Senate floor to show the latent support for the bill the day after O’Laughlin killed Hardwick’s it in committee, he discussed it with eight senators expecting to return next year who said they plan to back it.
“We definitely have a clear path to bringing that to a vote,” Bean said in an interview with The Independent. “Right now, from what I see in the Senate, I think that vote, when we have that vote, it will pass.”
J&J Ventures has donated $120,000 directly to Bean’s PAC, with PACs funded by J&J giving another $40,000. Bean has also taken $25,794 from the PACs controlled by former House Speaker Steve Tilley, who lobbies for Torch..
In an interview with The Independent, Bean said voters understand him taking a donation of that size.
“They see that that’s just an important issue to the state of Missouri,” Bean said. “They would view that as an industry that’s supporting, once again, the regulation of VLTs, and wanting to bring the revenue dollars that we talked about back to the state of Missouri.”
For O’Laughlin, the donations are business as usual in Jefferson City.
“I’m not going to cast aspersions on my colleagues, but you know it’s about the money,” said O’Laughlin, a Republican from Shelbina. “It’s moneyed interests, and they are trying to convince people to vote for what they want. It’s really no different than any other special interest.”
O’Laughlin, who is not returning to the Senate due to term limits, has received $5,300 for her campaign committee from gambling interests and NEMO Leadership PAC, aligned with her politically, has taken $125,100. Her campaign committee donations include $4,800 from Paladin PAC, controlled by Arnold and funded by J&J Ventures.
Donations to the PAC include $75,000 from casino companies and the Missouri Gaming Association. Another $17,600 can be traced to J&J and $17,500 came from the PACs associated with Tilley.
Arnold said he thinks the donations from casino interests hardened O’Laughlin against the video lottery bill
“She dug in on this issue more than any other issue she’s dug in on,” he said.
O’Laughlin said she is not swayed by donations, adding that “just about every big interest contributes to pretty much everyone.”
The stakes
It is impossible to know how much money has been wagered on the slot machines played in gas stations and other locations since the machines first appeared about a decade ago. That is because they are not regulated like casinos and the lottery, which must report precise figures on how much is wagered and lost.
What is known is how much cash is handled by legal video lottery games in Illinois, which has about 49,500 terminals in use. In the 12 months that ended April 30, the games handled $13.2 billion in wagers, according to data from the Illinois Gaming Board.
That is about $265,000 for each terminal and $1,300 for every person over 18 in Illinois.
Players lost $3.3 billion, with $1.1 billion of that amount going to state and local revenues.
Bean estimates that the Missouri market could support as many as 35,000 video lottery terminals. If Missouri matches the Illinois results, that many machines would handle about $10 billion annually and bring about $600 million into the state treasury. The video lottery game companies and retail hosts would split about $1.2 billion.
“I firmly believe that once we get machines regulated, that the income off these machines could push north of $600 million,” Bean said.
The machines provided by Torch and other vendors, whether legal or not, have become a source of sustaining revenue for rural convenience stores and veterans organizations, Bean said. If the money is cut off without replacement, he said, stores will close and charitable activities by fraternal organizations will decline.
“It’s time to regulate it,” Bean said. ”It’s time to put this issue behind us and bring this revenue to the state.”
Legal gambling in Missouri is already a market worth more than $20 billion annually. The state’s 13 casinos reported handling $18.3 billion in wagers during fiscal 2025, with $17 billion bet on slot machines.
The Missouri Lottery sold $1.6 billion worth of tickets in fiscal 2025. And $1.8 billion has been wagered on sports since December, when the first legal bets were accepted.
The opposition runs along two tracks. The first is a moral objection to expanding gambling.
“If we have to promote something that I don’t believe anyone can say is a good, stabilizing activity for families, then where do we draw the line?” O’Laughlin said. “If making money is the sole determination of what we’ll do, there’s really nothing we won’t do.”
The second track is among lawmakers concerned whether the General Assembly should send the question to voters.
Every form of gambling currently legal in Missouri has been approved by voters as an amendment to the Constitution.
The first was bingo games for charity in 1980, followed by the lottery in 1984, horse racing in 1986, slot machines at riverboat casinos in 1994, charitable raffles in 1998 and sports wagering in 2024.
“The people of the state of Missouri need to weigh in on whether or not they want yet another form of gambling, especially casinos in their backyard,” said state Rep. Don Mayhew, a Crocker Republican opposing Hardwick in the 16th District Republican primary.
Backers argue the constitution’s lottery section is enough authority to act without going to voters.
The bill will never satisfy people who oppose gambling on principle, Arnold said. But it would put the machines out of sight in retail locations, keep minors from playing and track the dollars being wagered, which is not being done in the gray market.
Law enforcement will not be able to shut down these games because new games will replace them. Only the Legislature, he said, can create a law that makes any game not authorized by the lottery an illegal game.
“There’s no bright line as to what’s legal or illegal,” Arnold said. “You have got to make a case on each machine, and from our perspective, that’s whack-a-mole.”
