Maryland's elected officials have a familial sort of love for horse racing — boasting of the jobs and land preservation the industry brings to the state, even as they deal with disappointed expectations, unpaid loans and repeated entreaties for one last chance.
Once a year, politicians beam like proud parents on prom night as they watch Maryland horse racing all dressed up for the pageantry of the Preakness, the second jewel of the Triple Crown and the state's largest sporting event.
This time of year, it's hard to imagine lawmakers saying no to any racing request. On Friday, Gov. Martin O'Malley plans to visit Kentucky Derby winner Animal Kingdom at his training facility in Elkton, milling among horses and trainers as a way to promote Maryland horse racing during the week in which it shines brightest.
But even among racing's fiercest advocates, patience is wearing thin.
"It has been a disaster for the state of Maryland, a total, unmitigated disaster," said Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller, a driving force behind state aid to the industry for the past several decades.
"I don't have optimism" that Maryland racing can be saved, the Prince George's County Democrat said. "But I still have hope."
This year, even as lawmakers approved $12 million in slots money to help support day-to-day track operations, they imposed greater oversight on the struggling industry, requiring reviews of financial documents, marketing strategies and a five-year business plan.
Legislative leaders say the state might, at some point, have to rethink its financial ties to racing.
"The question has become: 'What's the role of state government in continuing to promote and underwrite thoroughbred horse racing?'" said House Speaker Michael E. Busch. The Anne Arundel Democrat said the state's "rich tradition" of racing knocks against the reality that "it's a failing industry."
Lawmakers have wrestled for more than a decade with how much to help, Busch said, "and it will continue to be debated for the next 10 years."
The state has handed over $38.5 million since 1997 to increase purses for races, in the hopes that exciting, fully fielded races will lure new fans. More recently, lawmakers have funneled another $6.3 million from the state's fledgling slot-machine gambling program to track owners for facilities improvements and day-to-day operations.
As much as $1 billion more could flow toward racing over the next decade. When Maryland lawmakers designed the slots program in 2007, they agreed to give horse racing a 9.5 percent cut of all the revenue it generates — up to $140 million per year.
At the same time, the Maryland Jockey Club, which owns the state's two major thoroughbred horse racing tracks — Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, the home of the Preakness, and Laurel Park in Anne Arundel County — is falling deeper into a financial pit, according to its recent financial disclosures. It has lost about $46 million over the past three years.
To stanch the bleeding, lawmakers agreed this year to allow track owners to use up to $12 million in slots money that was supposed to go toward track improvements to help keep a full racing calendar.
But — in a sign of growing distrust between state and racing officials — that money comes with strings attached.
The General Assembly created a Thoroughbred Racing Sustainability Task Force of track owners, horsemen and breeders, and is requiring the group to submit a five-year plan for legislative review by December.
Additionally, horse racing license holders are to provide legislators with financial information and develop a five-year business plan "that describes the challenges impacting the economics of operating the racing facility and strategies for addressing those challenges."
The state is also playing parent in another way: Since November, O'Malley and his top advisers have been mediating industry infighting, helping the state's track owners, horsemen and breeders work out their differences so they can focus on keeping racing alive.
"I think it's a shame that all the times we've been around the track, so to speak, they haven't been able to come up with a long-term strategy that everyone can live with," O'Malley said.
Jockey Club President Tom Chuckas was asked about the growing frustration of the elected officials.
"I think it's fair to say the governor and legislature want horse racing and the thoroughbred industry to be successful, and they recognize that's a difficult task and a huge challenge without slots," he said.
While lawmakers grumble that the state, which faced its own $1.5 billion budget hole this year, can't keep bailing out a dying industry, few cast votes against racing-related proposals.
The $12 million subsidy passed the Senate by a vote of 40-5 and the House of Delegates 106-28.
In the eyes of many lawmakers, racing's losses must be balanced against an array of pluses. The Preakness alone has been estimated to contribute as much as $40 million to Maryland's economy while giving the city and state a day of national exposure each year.
And the industry — with its attendant horse farms, feed producers, groomers and others — employs thousands of Marylanders and forestalls development on hundreds of thousands of acres of rolling farmland.
Richard Hoffberger, president of the Maryland Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association, said racing has a "huge" impact on the state.
"Any industry that large often works with the legislature to preserve and promote jobs," he said.
There's also tradition — no trivial matter in a state that embraces its history.
The Jockey Club dates back about 250 years, and this year marks the 136th Preakness.
Miller, an amateur historian, noted in an opinion piece in The Baltimore Sun two years ago that George Washington wrote of coming to Annapolis to watch and bet on horse races.
By some measures, Bethesda-based industry analyst Jeffrey Hooke said, spending on horse racing is "justified" — he noted that it has received only a sliver of the public money football and baseball have, with expensive stadiums built by the state.
But as the slots money earmarked for racing grows in the coming years, he said, lawmakers must continually evaluate whether "such large subsidies" are warranted "for an industry that's not growing and that has no high-tech or growth-industry jobs."
Stephen Walters, an economics professor at Loyola University Maryland, said it is fair for other industries to question why the state subsidizes racing and not, for example, dry cleaning or car sales.
"Lots of industries are hanging on by their fingernails," he said. The slots revenue-sharing formula, he said, "will be under immense scrutiny for years to come."
Lawmakers, he said, "must continually ask the questions, 'Is this industry in a death spiral?'"
A handful, including Del. Luiz R.S. Simmons, have already determined the answer is yes.
The Montgomery County Democrat is one of the industry's most outspoken opponents in Annapolis. He says he objects to state aid because the 9,000 racing jobs account for 0.35 percent of the estimated 2.6 million jobs in Maryland.
"It is comically absurd to continue to invest money in these people," Simmons said. "At a time when government ought to have the courage and the conviction to establish priorities, we in Maryland, because of our infatuation with the old Southern Maryland horse culture, have decided to put a moribund business ahead of adequately funding pensions, building schools and all sorts of other things."
Busch said the debate over horse racing is "highlighted this week every year." Most other days, he said, "you'd be rattling around the grandstand trying to find some fans."
But come Saturday, state dignitaries meander among the corporate party tents in the debauchery-free half of Pimlico's infield, sipping champagne and rubbing seersucker-suited shoulders. The governor gets a moment on national television as he drapes a blanket of black-eyed Susans over the shoulders of the winning horse.
"It's like hosting the Super Bowl every year," O'Malley said.
O'Malley said last year that it was his first Preakness that he felt confident would not be his last. The state had struck an agreement with Pimlico's majority stakeholder, MI Developments, to keep the race in Maryland as the previous track owner emerged from bankruptcy.
The industry has had many such close calls.
Panic about horse racing — along with cries for state government assistance — dates back at least a decade. And for just as long, officials have felt torn.
Democratic former Gov. Parris Glendening says he struggled throughout his two terms as governor with how the state should support the industry.
Over the years, though, he said, Miller and other legislative leaders — who tapped into his desire to curb development — "were able to convince me that this is an important part of the Maryland economy that required an ongoing subsidy."
Still, he said, "I was never convinced the huge amount of subsidies and tax deferrals and everything the state gave was really equal to the number of jobs created."
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State aid to horse racing
Past aid
2011: $6.3 million for purse funds and facility upgrades, money from slots program
2002: $3.5 million purse supplement, money from racing facility redevelopment bond fund (fund repealed in 2004)
2000: $10 million purse supplement, money from state general funds
1999: $10 million purse supplement, money from state general funds
1998: $10 million purse supplement, money from state general funds
1997: $5 million purse supplement, money from state general funds
Total: $44.8 million
Future predicted aid
A fully functional five-casino slots program could generate as much as $140 million per year for the industry, used for purse funds, horse breeding programs and facility upgrades. By law, 9.5 percent of all slots money goes to the industry.
Source: Maryland Department of Legislative Services