or years, greyhound racing in Massachusetts has been dying a slow death, squeezed by the competition for entertainment and gaming dollars. Animal-rights activists hope to kill the sport outright at the ballot box on Nov. 7.
Question 3 may be the most emotionally charged initiative petition ever to reach a statewide ballot, making the 1996 leg trap ban campaign seem like an academic exercise by comparison.
The activists are circulating leaflets and a video showing greyhound carcasses being dumped, though they neglect to say the images are from other states. The racing industry counters, implying animal-rights ''extremists'' will next take away the right to eat meat, drink milk, wear leather, or hunt and fish.
This has national significance. Bay State voters are the first in the nation to be asked to ban dog racing, essentially placing the rights of animals above those of human beings, who, for 65 years here, have bet on the sleek hounds.
A poll done two weeks ago for Grey2K, the grass-roots group behind the question, showed strong support for banning the sport. But it predates a counteroffensive by the industry, which, in late September, had already purchased $900,000 worth of advertising urging defeat of the question.
Hanging in the balance is a sport that last year generated $280 million in wagers, jobs for about 2,000 track and kennel workers, $8.4 million in racing taxes to the state, plus several million dollars more in income, sales, and local property taxes.
Ironically, Massachusetts' two greyhound parks - Wonderland in Revere and Raynham-Taunton - are among the nation's best, and the industry here is among the most highly regulated.
But the activists, who've tried unsuccessfully for years to persuade the Legislature to kill dog racing, say the industry is by its nature inhumane, and Bay State tracks are part of a national network responsible for the annual killing of at least 7,000 dogs that have outlived their profitability as racers. There are some documented cases of abuse here too, they assert.
State regulators, however, say that only 58 greyhounds were put down in Massachusetts last year, fewer than the number of pet dogs euthanized in many individual towns in the state.
''There are no borders in dog racing,'' said David Vaughn of Jamaica Plain, a spokesman for Grey2K. Most of the nearly 2,200 dogs registered in Massachusetts left the state at some point during the year, said Vaughn, shipped out, often to lesser-quality tracks or ''to the farm,'' which he called ''an uncreative euphemism'' for warehousing until they're used for medical research or merely destroyed.
The tracks are fighting back, framing this as a battle to ''Stop Animal Rights Extremism.''
Through Sept. 30, the pro-racing group, calling itself the Massachusetts Animal Interest Coalition, had outraised Grey2K, $1.1 million to $342,000. More than $1 million of the tracks' bankroll came from Raynham-Taunton and Wonderland. Twelve contributions totalling $63,000 came from dog-racing interests in Florida, Texas, Arizona, Alabama, Colorado, and New Hampshire. Even Yankee Greyhound Racing in Seabrook, N.H., a direct competitor of Wonderland, kicked in $2,500.
Indeed, the story behind the story is that Charles Sarkis of Wonderland and George Carney of Raynham-Taunton have become strange bedfellows after years of fighting fiercely over dates and other scraps of dwindling racing turf. No wonder. In the past decade, attendance at the tracks and state revenues they produce have plummeted by two-thirds. Eating into their take are Keno and other lottery games, casinos in Connecticut, and slot machines at Rhode Island's Lincoln Park.
Robert M. Hutchinson Jr., chairman of the State Racing Commission, objects to the Grey2K's ''misinformation.''
''The animal-rights movement has not been truthful,'' said Hutchinson. ''They're trying to ensnare us in a national issue, with what goes on in Alabama or Arkansas. It's wrong ... This is a highly regulated industry in this state ... We're the only state in the country with a State Police unit assigned to the Racing Commission. We inspect kennels; I inspect them myself.''
Grey2K's Vaughn, however, said he's seen abuse. Three years ago, he adopted Aggie, a female racer marked for destruction after breaking a leg. ''She was underfed, had worms and other parasites, and the broken leg wasn't set,'' he said. ''It was in a toilet paper tube wrapped in bandages.''
As for the slippery-slope charge that ''extremists'' have a larger agenda, Vaughn said: ''I'm no extremist. I had a hamburger for dinner last night, milk at breakfast, and I'm wearing leather shoes right now.''
