Lottery Chief: Ensign Not in Kan. Casino Plan

Retired Las Vegas gambling executive Mike Ensign is no longer involved in an attempt to build a casino south of Wichita, the Kansas Lottery's executive director said Tuesday.

Ensign's involvement in a previous proposal for a Lottery-owned casino in Sumner County in south-central Kansas had brought the plan additional scrutiny because he is the father of Nevada Sen. John Ensign, a Republican who confessed in June to an affair. The senator said in July that his parents had paid his mistress and her family $96,000.

Lottery Executive Director Ed Van Petten said that both Mike Ensign and Peter Simon, another former Mandalay Resort Group executive, have dropped out of efforts to bring a casino to Sumner County. He said they didn't like the fact that the Lottery owns the new gambling under Kansas law — or the 27 percent share of revenues reserved for state and local governments.

The two former Mandalay executives were part of South Central Gaming Partners, which had been one of three developers seeking a casino contract with the Lottery for Sumner County. The former competitors have now joined forces to push a single plan.

"I do not expect that to include Mike Ensign or Peter Simon," Van Petten said in an interview. "Basically, they just didn't like the regulatory makeup."

The remaining plan, for the Chisholm Creek Resort Casino, received the Kansas Lottery Commission's endorsement Tuesday. The $225 million project would be built near Mulvane, about 20 miles south of Wichita off the Kansas Turnpike exit for Kansas 53.

A state casino selection board still must review the Chisholm Creek plan and decide by the end of October whether it can move forward. Had the Lottery Commission still had competing plans, it could have forwarded more them all to the selection board, which would have picked one.

A spokeswoman for South Central Gaming Partners did not return telephone messages Tuesday. Attempts to find an office number for Mike Ensign were unsuccessful, and there was no phone number in an Internet listing for his Las Vegas home.