Consider it a gradual ratcheting up of pressure on the Assembly to approve those revised, and controversial, Indian gaming agreements.

Sources have confirmed that the Moronogo Band of Mission Indians has begun a new campaign for its gaming deal that would trade new slot machines for annual profit sharing to the state.

The tribe is reportedly targeting as many as 22 Assembly districts, with some of those being the districts of Assemblymembers who sit on the Governmental Organization Committee. Those districts are the focus of phone calls (live callers and ‘robo-callers’) and old fashioned door-to-door campaigning.

The script for the phone calls seems to go along the following lines: “Assemblymember ____ is missing a crucial opportunity to increase the state’s revenues without raising taxes.” And sources say the phone calls specifically reference AB 266, the legislation that would ratify Morongo’s tribal gaming compact.

Several Capitol sources agree that this new PR campaign is pretty much a Morongo tribe effort, not a campaign by the four other major gaming tribes with compacts that, for now, appear stalled in the Assembly. As has been noted before, labor unions remain opposed to the compacts because of the language regarding the rights of casino workers to organize.