“Anybody who would enter office owning a piece of a casino, it would be really, really wrong, and they would need to divest in my view,” Dunbar said. “The idea that a governor would have an interest in a gambling establishment is the ultimate conflict of interest, and it’s entirely improper,” said John Dunbar, chief executive officer of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Public Integrity, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalism non-profit whose past work has delved heavily into government ethics. Nevada, New Jersey, Louisiana and Pennsylvania, for example, outright prohibit public officials, including governors, from holding any interest in state casino licenses.
That situation isn’t even allowed in several other states with casino gambling.
