2008 Libertarian Vice Presidential Nominee Wayne Allyn Root

After achieving his childhood dream of becoming “his generation’s Jimmy the Greek” (really) and bringing untold success to his sportsbook operation Winning Edge International Inc., Wayne Allyn Root is setting out on another mission; namely, to become the next vice president of the United States.

All right, as a ticketmate of former Republican senator Bob Barr running on America’s Libertarian Party, Root doesn’t foster many delusions of actually winning Election 2008 for his third party. However, this millionaire who still thinks of himself as a small businessman, has got a long-term goal in mind: As he declared his candidacy on Las Vegas’ FOX 5 television station prior to Libertarian party primaries, Root also stated that “by 2012, 2016, 2020, there’s a good shot Wayne Root will be in the White House.”

A bit of a brash statement? Perhaps, but Root knows a few things about winning in third-party politics. Root’s parents were among the co-founders of the still-extant New York State Conservative Party. In 1970, the Conservatives managed to get its party’s candidate, James Buckley, elected onto Capitol Hill as the sole third-party senator in the country.

Tell you what, too: History aside, Wayne Allyn Root is as energetic as Barack Obama is unflappable, as passionate for change as John McCain is earnestly steadfast, and more charismatic than either. Seemingly impossible feat or not, if any third party candidate ever takes the Hill, it could well be this guy.

In the upcoming election, one in which America's poker players and online gamers are increasingly expressing their interests, Root can only stand to gain by going to his bread-and-butter industry. Indeed, the suddenly high-profile Poker Players’ Alliance has acknowledged the Libertarian ticket of Bob Barr and Wayne Root as tops in its recent “Presidential Candidates and Internet Poker Rights” survey, awarding the ticket a solid A+. (Barack Obama received a C, John McCain a D, and then-contending Hillary Clinton finished second-best with a B.)

“Running for vice president keeps you busy,” Root joked with LCD as he finished off his day’s first interview – which he was happy to give at 8 a.m. PST, a normally ungodly hour in Sin City. You’d think that running one of America’s biggest handicapping operations and home-schooling his four kids would be enough, but the man’s seemingly inexhaustible supply of vim and vigor isn’t threatened with any critical shortage yet.

LiveCasinoDirect.com: How did you first get into sportsbook after studying political science at university?

Wayne Allyn Root: Funny enough, politics and sports handicapping are tied together, even though they’re such disparate worlds. My interest in politics began at the age of three, when I was handing out literature in my father’s office for Barry Goldwater in 1964; politics is one of the passions of my life, always has been. And the sportsbook making and handicapping has always been a part of my life.

I grew up in a little town called Mount Vernon, New York, right on the Bronx border, and if you know anything about New York, you know people love to gamble on sports – There’s a sportsbook on every corner! So as a kid growing up, I was betting on football games with all my friends. It’s a great, natural thing to do in New York; I don’t know about everywhere else in the world, but on the East Coast, that’s what people do. And so I did, and I won. I cleaned everybody out! The result was is that a local sportswriter found out about me, wrote it up, called this kid in Mount Vernon “the next Jimmy the Greek,” which led to my dream to become the Jimmy the Greek of my generation.

LCD: And you actually worked with Jimmy the Greek at one point.

Root: I did. Jimmy the Greek was fired from CBS for some racial remarks in 1989, and six months later, he was hired by what is now CNBC but was called “the Financial News Network” back then. I was hired by FNN to become an anchorman to co-host with Jimmy the Greek a show about odds. We were partners on TV, and that was quite an American dream. I wanted to grow up and be Jimmy the Greek, and all of a sudden at the age of 27, I’m partnered with him on TV, and in two or three months, he retired and it became my show. It shows the American Dream is still alive, and I’m a kid that made it happen.

LCD: Why did you leave the Republican Party?

Root: I’ve been a very big Republican contributor, Republican supporter, Republican activist my entire life until about two years ago when I realized the GOP had left me. I didn’t leave it: It left me. There were quite a few things that triggered that realization, but one of the major ones was of course the – for all intents and purposes – the ban on online gambling. Basically, that led me to believe that anyone claiming to be for smaller government but who wants to get involved in the bedrooms and computers and private citizen’s choices of entertainment is not at all interested in small government – They’re interested in bigger government! That led me to believe that the Republican Party talks one game, but talking the talk is not the same as walking the walk.

And I suddenly realized between Terri Schiavo and abortion and gay rights and online gambling and so many other personal issues that are between you and God or that involve your money and your computer in your bedroom, that the Republican party was becoming Big Brother. Between that and the expansion of the government by [president George W.] Bush, I became a Libertarian.

LCD: What can you tell me about the Barr-Root ticket?

Root: Bob Barr and I think alike on almost every major issue; we really are two peas in a pod. We’re both ex-Republicans who devoted our lives to the GOP and we’re both people who believe that the government has to stay out of your personal and financial life. We were both running for the Libertarian Party nomination and at the convention it became obvious that if we combined forces, he’d win the nomination. Finally, it got to the point where I realized I had to throw my support to Bob Barr, I did, and he got the nomination. It made a lot of sense.

We both bring our strengths to the ticket – I’d say mine is youthful enthusiasm and high energy. Plus, I think I bring a couple of groups that are good for Bob Barr’s campaign: small businessmen, because I’m a small businessman; home-schooling parents, because I’m a home-schooling parent – the first on a Presidential ticket in modern history; and I also am a Las Vegas guy and Nevada is one of the [battleground] states in this election and a very Libertarian state. And with my background in the gambling industry, I can bring incredible power to the ticket because there are 50 million poker enthusiasts in the United States and at least 12 million that play online. And I think all of them potentially could come to the Libertarian ticket. There’s never been anyone so pro-poker and pro-gambling industry on a presidential ticket.

LCD: And one of those 50 million is Barack Obama...

Root: The thing about Barack Obama is that I don’t know how anyone in the poker industry can trust him. Here’s a guy based on “Let’s end the Iraq war” and now that he’s got the nomination, what does he say? “Well, maybe I was a bit hasty, conditions may change on the ground and we may be stay longer than I said.” He’s flip-flopped on 20 major issues in just the last few weeks. He said he wanted to end warrant-less wiretaps under FISA and then he went and voted for warrant-less wiretaps. If you think this is a guy that is going to save the poker industry because he plays poker, well, if it doesn’t matter to getting elected, he’s going to forget about you in five minutes flat.

Both major parties survive on what I call “legal bribery.” What they do is hand out goodies, make government bigger, and they’re willing to change their views on a moment’s notice to get elected, but all they care about is power. Libertarians just believe in what we believe in, and we don’t change our minds to get elected. I think it’s a mistake to vote for Obama, and the smart move for the industry is to vote Barr-Root because we’ll fight for the rights of poker players. And even if we don’t win and Barack Obama does, we are a major power player if we can prove that we can bring 5 million or more votes to either Republican or Democrat.

LCD: Tell me about the Libertarian position on UIGEA and the SAFE Port Act.

Root: Well, UIGEA’s an easy one. I’d say it’s one of the most damaging bills in the history of politics. First of all, [the UIGEA legislation] was passed without any discussion of what it meant as part of the SAFE Port Act. Most voting for SAFE Port didn’t even know UIGEA was part of the bill and those who did realize it were given no time to read it, discuss it, or discover what it meant. So it was a travesty.

And it’s hypocrisy. It’s one of the worst bills because for all intents and purposes it bans online gambling. Some people say “Oh, it’s not a ban,” but it essentially gives the government the right to prosecute anyone financially involved in online gambling. Of course it’s a ban! That ban is hypocrisy at its finest because they carved out legalities for horse racing and state lotteries and fantasy football. How about that one? The National Football League campaigned against online sports gambling, but then probably spent a million dollars on lobbyists so that fantasy football would have a place carved out in the bill. And it’s all legal bribery: the horse-racing industry, the state lotteries, and the tribal casinos obviously gave more money to the politicians than anyone in the online gambling industry did, so they won.

None of this has anything to do with making American safer, with making America better, with doing what’s right morally, all it’s about is who gives you the biggest bribes! That’s what wrong with our whole political system. The fact is I have a right to play a game of poker on my computer.

The issue is much bigger than poker, as I say at campaign events all over the country. People will laugh at me when I say that poker is a big issue with the Iraq war, a country in recession, an economy in crisis, a banking system on the verge of collapse, immigration overrunning our borders, healthcare imploding ... they laugh at me!

On the other hand, I say that it’s about what it represents: internet freedom. When the government of the United States tells you, over something as silly as a game of online poker, about what choice you have with your own money on your own computer in your bedroom, well then, I’d say we have a government that’s out of control and think about what they’re going to use to control your life. If they’re going to tell you whether you can play poker or not, I think people should be very concerned about UIGEA. Because it affects your life: today if you’re a poker player, but the next step tomorrow is going to affect everyone. It shows that government is going to overreach and try to control every aspect of your life.

LCD: Some believe that those in the traditional gambling world are biased against online gaming and want to keep it on the fringes. In your opinion is this so? Is there a brick-and-mortar vs.online casinotussle?

Root: There’s no question there’s some truth to that [belief]. In Massachusetts, the governor tried to pass a law saying that basically if you gambled online, you the gambler are actually guilty of a felony. How outrageous is that? At least with the laws in place at the national level right now, the individual isn’t the criminal. The reason why Gov. Patrick did that was to represent land-based gambling interests in Massachusetts that didn’t want the competition.

There’s no question there are those in the land-based business who maybe don’t understand or who have no hope of being in the online business that want to limit the competition. But if you look at Vegas, originally the casino owners saw a threat from online gambling and they were certainly in favor of wanting to damage or somehow stop cold online gambling – this was literally just a competition issue.

All that has changed and they’ve come around. Terry Lani, the chairman of MGM Mirage and many others have publicly stated that they’re big proponents of online gambling; I believe them because they understand how much money there is for MGM Mirage. If they want to represent their shareholders correctly and accept their fudiciary responsibility as chairmen of a major gaming company, they’ve got to see that online gambling could double or triple their revenues at virtually no expense – certainly not at the cost of building a billion-dollar casino. The revenue reach is incredible, even if you’re not getting money from American citizens. Even if it’s only foreign citizens gambling, MGM Mirage could make a ton of money by being the king of online gambling based in America. And it’s a credible name, so you know you’re going to get paid if you win. I believe that land-based casinos have seen the future and the future is online gaming. The days of [brick-and-mortar casinos] seeing online as competition are coming to an end.

LCD: What can you tell people who are afraid of “throwing their vote away” on a third-party candidate?

Root: The only thing I can say about throwing your vote away is that you’ve been throwing your vote away for the last 50 or 60 years going Republican or Democrat. That’s the wasted vote, because nothing ever changes and you never get what you want by voting for them.

I think the way to get what you want is to prove that there are 5 or 10 million people out there who are angry and will mobilize in support of online gambling – that’s just one issue, by the way, and I think there are hundreds of issues people could be mobilizing behind the Libertarian Party. If you ignore us as Libertarian free-market poker players, ignore at your own risk. We could determine this election. There’s no question this election will be closer than 5 million votes; we could make the whole difference in this election!

And by voting Barr-Root ... in the worst-case scenario, you could help defeat John McCain and the Republican Party, who is responsible for the online gambling ban. Then all of a sudden, we have tremendous power and Obama knows that next time he’ll be voted out if he doesn’t overturn that ban. If you vote for Obama, you’re gonna get lost in a crowd. He’s going to get 50-60 million votes and your vote is going to get lost, he’s got about 1,000 other issues that are more important, he’s got to worry about all the liberal special-interest groups that couldn’t care less about poker. Poker will be the last thing on his mind and he may betray you the way he betrayed all those people against FISA. I think you get much more strength by creating a third party with power, and online gamblers can gain a large stake in that third party.

Last but not least, my parents were two of the founders of the New York State Conservative Party, and they got James Buckley elected as a senator: [There were] 99 Republicans and Democrats, one third-party conservative – They actually proved that you can win, Jesse “The Body” Ventura proved you can win as a third party. You only need 33-1/3 percent to win a three-way race, and I think Bob Barr and Wayne Root are going to again prove it can be done.

LCD: Anything else?

Root: As I say good-bye, I want to make sure that all the people out there in the gambling world who are reading this interview know how to donate, how to support us, how to volunteer, because we need donations and volunteers in order to compete with the two-party system; the Libertarian Party needs your help and Barr-Root needs your help. Please see our website BobBarr2008.com or RootForAmerica.com. We are the underdog and we can’t do it without your support and help. We need all of you to get involved in the Barr-Root campaign!