Sponsorship of the San Diego Padres is a small part of the new tribal enterprises Sycuan Chairman Daniel Tucker is leading. (photo/alandeckerphoto.com)

No stranger to America’s pastime, Daniel Tucker played third base and center field on the 1970 Santana High School championship squad that was led by Terry Forster, who went on to a 16-year Major League Baseball pitching career. More recently Tucker, too, has managed to enjoy an affiliation with the big leagues. His has come as chairman of the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation, a major Padres’ sponsor since 1995. For that, Sycuan’s employees get to play a few softball games on the diamond and Tucker gets to enjoy flexing old skills — “Heck yeah, baseball is fun” — even though golf today is his sport.

The East County tribe that Tucker leads has never been shy about improving its game. Twenty years ago it surprised state officials by having a bingo hall open the day a permit was issued. Now it is blazing trails in Native American business diversification. In the last year, Sycuan has bought the U.S. Grant Hotel for $45 million, purchased property adjacent to Petco Park and helped finance a new hotel on the site, started the nation’s first Indian-controlled mutual fund, partnered with National City and others on a $30 million hotel/marina project and started a boxing promotion company. It retains a spot as a major Padres sponsor, this year becoming part of what the team refers to as its Big Five.

All these partnerships and business opportunities have happened on Tucker’s watch. He is an outgoing leader with an interest in tribal government that started when he was 11.

Tucker’s strong interpersonal skills have made him a national and statewide figure in Native American issues. This month he retires as vice chairman of the National Indian Gaming Association, a position he has held 10 years. As chairman for the California Nations Indian Gaming Association, he introduced the first legislation to win bipartisan support for tribal gaming. He also was the first Native American leader to address the state Legislature on the Assembly floor.

Growing Up In El Cajon

Daniel “Danny” Tucker, 52, grew up in the Pepper Drive area of El Cajon. When he graduated from Santana, he had a job earning $1.50 an hour at Big Bear market. Today he drives a red convertible Corvette. His father, a Blackfoot Indian from Tennessee, was a butcher at Cuyamaca Meats. His mother, Francis, was a Kumeyaay active in tribal government and Tucker recalls wanting to go with her to meetings as young as age 11. (You have to be 18 years old, and at least 1/8th Kumeyaay to belong to the council.)

Tucker and his wife, Jackie, a member of the tribe, have been married six years and the couple have six children from previous marriages.

Long an accomplished singer — childhood friend Micki Felix laughs recalling her repeated fourth grade requests to hear Ricky Nelson’s “Travelin’ Man” — Tucker has used his personal gaming wealth to form a private recording company. Singing rhythm and blues, he opened for Little Richard at Sycuan, and his favorite possession at home is a $15,000 karaoke system. Nearly everyone interviewed for this feature commented on Tucker’s ability to carry a tune. “Have you heard him sing?” asks Steve Violetta, executive vice president of business affairs for the Padres. Violetta says Tucker does an amazing job with the national anthem.

As chairman, Tucker is responsible for a 4,000-employee business and the welfare of the citizens of a sovereign nation. Sycuan’s reservation is one square mile in size, too small to house its 170 members. So Tucker is leading an expansion onto adjacent property the tribe has purchased and put into a federal trust. Up to 29 modest-sized homes will be built. The tribe also has plans for a new medical and dental clinic. Tucker says all the adults are working or enrolled in a job training program. All the college-age children are in school; the tribe offers financial incentives for them to continue their education.

When his second four-year term as tribal chairman expires in two years, Tucker does not expect to seek re-election. “I think I am done,” he says. “The responsibility of the chairman is to make sure the next generation is ready. We have some great kids in there who are trying to get to that point.”

Tucker also is doing some personal diversification. Along with Mike Furby, the owner of Marathon Construction, he has formed a construction business that will bid on federal contracts that require the participation of minority contractors. Furby, whose wife runs Sycuan’s dental clinic, met Tucker about 10 years ago. “He is a great people person,” Furby says. “He is very connected with the people who work at Sycuan and is highly regarded.”

Childhood pal Felix sees Tucker as a natural leader.

“I am not really surprised to see him where he is today,” Felix says. “Everyone loves Danny. It is his personality; his charisma. He is a very up-front and honest person. He truly cares about people and the community and everything that is happening.”

The Casino

On a Tuesday afternoon in mid-March, the temperature has hit 90 deep in rural East County. The cloudless skies are blue and the encircling hills, dotted with oaks, are that late-winter grassy green color that follows good winter rains. At Sycuan Casino, the valets are doing a steady business.

Casually dressed, people are leisurely moving in and out of the pastel painted gaming establishment, serenaded by classic Top 40 pop music that spills from speakers recessed in the awnings. Inside, behind the second set of glass doors, the temperature is cool. As the doors are opened and shut by casino employees to let patrons in and out, the faint smell of tobacco smoke wafts out.

When Tucker arrives, he quickly lives up to his gregarious reputation. Casino employees, and patrons, greet him warmly, almost always calling him Danny, as he leads a brisk tour. He shows where new and old development have overlapped and makes a point of noting the cash cages, where, he says, he never ventures, finally settling down for a chat over apple pie in one of the casino’s restaurants.

With food, noise and entertainment, the casino is every bit the real McCoy. During this visit, Bob Eubanks, the legendary host of the Newlywed Game, is performing on stage in the casino’s theater before an audience of Club Sycuan members. The majority are women north of age 50. Eubanks is charming them with video clips, contests and mildly racy questions — “Whose husband is a bad lover?” — that bring them on stage. He’s also giving away $30,000 in prizes and chances at $250,000.

In that same theater, where Little Richard played earlier, a boxing match was planned in the next week.

The Diversification Quest

Through its business development arm, Sycuan Tribal Development Corp., the tribe has established itself as as an aggressive leader in diversification. In addition to its casino and golf course, Sycuan has purchased the 284-room U.S. Grant Hotel and has plans to develop a $30 million hotel, restaurant and conference center project in National City.

Katherine Spilde, a senior research associate with The Harvard Project On American Indian Economic Development, says, like Sycuan, gaming tribes across the nation are busily investing in diversification.

Off-reservation investments, Spilde says, are the most challenging because tribes are competing in the host jurisdiction’s marketplace. This is where, she says, Sycuan is getting the most attention. “Sycuan is a role model for pursuing off-reservation diversification,” she says. Moves like Sycuan’s and those of other Southern California tribes caused her to move to Coachella Valley last year to better watch the trends unfold.

While gaming — 2,000 slot machines, a 1,200-seat bingo area and a host of table games — remains Sycuan’s most lucrative investment, Tucker says it is his responsibility to look into the future, a time where the prospects of Native American gaming are cloudy.

“The (state gambling) compacts were hard to get,” Tucker says. “Keeping the compacts will be harder.”

Indeed, two measures may be on the November ballot to change the way gaming is regulated, one that would allow gaming at some race tracks. Another two are under discussion and, pressed for revenue, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is pushing hard for an increased cut of gaming dollars.

“We need to make sure if this does go away we have other ways of making money,” Tucker says.

Spilde says the tribes understand what could happen.

“In spite of signed compacts and agreements, there is an awareness that tribal rights rest on policy makers and the American media and a host of others,” Spilde says. “It is unlike any other business or political environment.”

Nikki Symington, a longtime political and marketing consultant to the tribes, notes the reservations’ remote locations puts the tribes at a geographic disadvantage with other entertainment venues. “Gaming works for the tribes only because they have the exclusivity of the government,” she says. “If they did not, and if they do not, people are not going to drive so far out of town if people can get (gaming) at the Del Mar Racetrack, Oceanside and in the Gaslamp,” she says.

She worries about that day coming.

“They really have a limited ability to make money off of their land,” Symington says. “It really is important they get off their land and into mainstream projects.”

The mainstream projects bring challenges of their own, not the least being that profit margins are often single digit and sometimes an investment can lose money or fail. For thriving casino owners, these are alien concepts.

Yet Tucker says his members are well aware of the risks.

“The gaming (profit) aspect of it all is just incredible,” Tucker says. “But when you see the golf course, it is doing great business too but it isn’t making as much as the casino. What is really good about our council is they know that there is risk out there. We know some businesses will fail but others will move forward.”

Risks aside, Spilde sees great upside from the relationships that ensue when tribes diversify.“You create a group of professional friends who can call their friends and explain how Indian gaming can be protected,” she says.

Sycuan is getting plenty of high-profile partners.

In the case of the property for the 10-story Hotel Solamar now under construction in the ballpark’s shadow at Sixth Avenue and J Street, Sycuan bought the land and entered into a 99-year ground lease for the project after a pitch late last year from Padres owner John Moores.

For the Marina Gateway project in National City, Sycuan’s partners are Latino Builders and MRW Group. The 170-room hotel and related development should open in late 2005.

In launching Sycuan Capital Management as the first tribal-owned registered investment adviser licensed by the SEC, the tribe partnered with Brandes Investment Partners, a $57.3 billion firm. As of Dec. 31, the fund’s Top 10 holdings were BellSouth Corp., Albertson’s Inc., Verizon Communications, Schering-Plough Corp., Merck & Co., Bristol-Meyers Squibb Co., Safeway Inc., Kroger Co., Duke Energy Corp. and SBC Communications Inc.

Finding The Deals

Along with Daniel Tucker, members Tina Muse (left) and Veronica Adkins sit on the independent Sycuan Tribal Development Corp. that evaluates investment possibilities.

The Sycuan Tribal Development Corp. takes the lead in investigating business proposals that come before the tribe. An independent federally chartered agency, it is headed by John Tang, president, and a separate board that for now includes Tucker and tribal members Tina Muse and Veronica Adkins. Sycuan expects to eventually expand the board to include non-tribal directors.

“They go out and look for these things and make sure they are a good investment for the tribe,” Tucker says. “Then it has to go to the general council for approval.”

Tang went to work 13 years ago for Sycuan as its business manager. About two years ago he stepped over to head the tribal development corporation.

“We recognize gaming is simply a means to an end and that gaming will continue to be pressured by outside forces, either to limit it or to impose fees,” Tang says. “We need to have a broader base. One of the things we are doing is mainstreaming our investments into areas that are more traditional, like real estate and equities, where we are investing in the same kind of stuff that large institutions would.”

Tang turns to outside experts to evaluate each proposal before taking it to the council, which he says understands the risks.

“Everybody understands the return on gaming is measured by a different yardstick than a return on a real estate project or a return on equities,” Tang says.

Some ideas have not been approved by the full 71-member adult council, including a gas station in Needles.

Decisions can be made quickly. For example, Wyndham International has been selling hotels since late last year. When the U.S. Grant came on the market, Tucker says it took Sycuan about eight or nine weeks to get council approval and close the $45 million purchase. (Wyndham bought the property in 2001 for $29 million.)

The purchase of a hotel built by the son of former president Ulysses S. Grant has emotional appeal for Sycuan. “Grant wrote the executive order to put us on the reservation,” Tucker notes. “He wasn’t the best president in the world but he did that.” Tucker also is quick to point out the tribe acquired more than a hotel. “We bought the property.”

Most decisions take longer, some years. The tribe has long planned for commercial development of 12 acres it owns at Dehesa Road and Harbison Canyon. It is working closely with Dehesa residents on the use.

“We invited our community in to find out what they would like there,” Tucker says. “A little shopping mall. Maybe a gas station, meat market, clothing store. We don’t know. There are a lot of avenues we can take.”

This kind of approach has earned the tribe the respect, and partnership, of San Diego County Supervisor Dianne Jacob. The supervisor is not shy about expressing her concern with tribal land use policies and is battling Barona over water issues and trying to prevent the Jamul Band from building its proposed casino.

But she praises Sycuan for its partnership approach.

“Over the last few years, Sycuan has been a role model in working with the county,” Jacob says. “I can’t say enough good things about Chairman Tucker. He has been good to work with. We have worked with the school district in Dehesa on some road projects. That was a very positive outcome for creating a safer road for the kids and traveling public. Sycuan has been a leader among tribes in the community.”