Q&A with Damon Thayer: Horse-Racing Champion

Citizen legislator chapter ends; involvement in industry won’t

Damon Thayer on Jan. 1, 2025 ends his 22-year run as a Kentucky State Senator, the last 13 as the Republican Majority Floor Leader, having announced last December that he would not seek re-election.

Thayer reflected on his career, how he got there and what’s next in a wide-ranging interview with Jennie Rees, communications consultant for the National HBPA. Some questions have been edited, including adding content to summarize portions of the interview and to better set up Thayer’s answers.

How did a boy from the northern part of Michigan in Grayling— hundreds of miles from a racetrack —  become so involved in horse racing?

“We had horses for my sister and me that we showed on the 4-H circuit. My sister was a real good barrel race; I was below average. But my dad met a gentleman named Harry Hubel at a regional 4-H leadership meeting and found out the guy bred and owned racehorses in Clare, Mich., about 90 minutes south of where we lived. My dad came home and said, ‘Hey, here’s the number for this guy Harry Hubel. He asked if you wanted to go sometime to Detroit to see one of his horses race.’ That was all I needed.

“… This was probably 1981. My dad drove me to Clare and then I rode with Mr. Hubel and his friend John Murphy — the grandfather of (Paulick Report writer) Joe Nevills. Funny, my first trip to the racetrack was with Joe Nevills’ grandfather to go to Hazel Park to watch a horse named Mild Speculator. The horse didn’t win, but I had a great time and have been going to the races ever since.

“It really also started for me in 1979 with Spectacular Bid. My sister had a pony that I’d sneak out of the barn to ride when she wasn’t around. It was this mean little Shetland pony. This horse would do anything she could to throw me off her back. I was too big for her; my feet would almost drag the ground. I’d take her down these trails through the woods and just make her run as fast as she could. And then she’d dump me, and I thought it was the greatest thing. I quit the Cub Scouts, joined the 4-H horse club with my sister. Asked my parents to buy me a horse, and then I read the Black Stallion. I watched the 1979 Florida Derby. Ronnie Franklin got Spectacular Bid in all kinds of trouble, and the horse still won. Bud Delp yelled at the kid after the race. But it was that series of events that got me hooked on horse racing.”

Majoring in communications at Michigan State University, Thayer got a summer job working in publicity under Bob Raymond at Detroit Race Course. That convinced him to go into racetrack publicity and management. His first Breeders’ Cup was 1988 at Churchill Downs, when he got a position on the media notes team.

“I skipped my senior year mid-terms at Michigan State. I was like, ‘See you, bye bye. I’ll take the test when I get back.’… Those old guys on the Breeders’ Cup notes team, Bill Leggett and Jack Will, they figured out right away that I liked European racing. They were like, ‘Oh yeah, you get to deal with Andre Fabre, kid. You get all the foreign horses.’ I thought it was the greatest thing. Those two guys — may they rest in peace — they were laughing their asses off. They were like, ‘This is great. We’ll just stick this kid outside the quarantine barn and make him wait to get a nugget from Michael Stoute or Andre Fabre.’ Back then it was really hard to get anything out of the Euros. Things have changed a lot. Back then I’d sit for hours outside the quarantine barn. I can remember Jonathan Pease doing everything he could to avoid me. He would run the other way.”

Thayer worked under track GM Mike Mackey at DRC and then Thistledown, his first full-time job, then went on to the Maryland Jockey Club, working under the late Tim Capps. 

“There was an AmTote convention in 1992 in Baltimore on a dark day. I sat in on it, and they had a bunch of speakers. The only guy who spoke and was positive about horse racing was Jerry Carroll. I was so impressed with him that I sent a resume to Jerry Carroll. Said, ‘I heard your speech and was really impressed. I’d love to work for you.’ Didn’t hear from him, then all of a sudden I got a call out of the blue from his secretary, Betty Barrett. Betty said, ‘Mr. Carroll would like to fly you to Kentucky and talk to you about working at Turfway.’ I flew up and back on a dark day, immediately hit it off with Jerry and Track President) Mark Simendinger.

“I always wanted to end up in Kentucky. A couple of days later Mark called me up and offered me the job. That changed the rest of my life.”

Thayer’s communications position expanded to virtually every other department at Turfway. He worked with Carroll and Simendinger to create and develop the Kentucky Cup Day of Champions into a nationally prominent event, held back when Turfway had a September meet. In 1998, Turfway Park, Churchill Downs, Brad Kelley and Curtis Green bought Dueling Grounds in Franklin, Ky., out of bankruptcy, with Turfway having management control. 

“Mark and Jerry wanted it, because back then inter-track wagering was a really big deal to our revenue stream. We’d lost that Nashville market, and Jerry and Mark wanted it back. Mark walked into my office one day and said, ‘Yeah, we just bought Dueling Grounds. I don’t really want to deal with it. You need to get down there, get it out of bankruptcy, give it a new name. Open up the restaurant, get it ready for simulcasting. And you’ve got to run nine days this fall.’ I’m like, ‘Mark, we’ve got the fall meet at Turfway at the same time. How am I going to do it?’ He said, ‘I don’t care. Put Robert (Forbeck, then Thayer’s PR assistant and now Daily Racing Form’s senior VP for national advertising) in charge while you’re gone.’”

Thayer named the Kentucky Cup and played a role in giving Dueling Grounds its current name.

“I walked down to Mark’s office. He and Jerry were in there, and I said, ‘I got a name. I got a great name. We should call it Rolling Green Race Course, because it’s turf racing and we’re playing off the name of (nearby) Bowling Green.’ Jerry looked at me and said, ‘Damon, that is the most (expletive) stupid thing I ever heard.’ He said, ‘Get you ass down there and call it Kentucky Downs.’ I walked out with my tail between my legs, created a logo and within a couple of weeks we were putting up a new sign calling it Kentucky Downs.

“Mark and Jerry taught me a lot about track management, how to run a track. Those were the glory days for Turfway. The Jim Beam Stakes (now the Jeff Ruby) was at its peak. We were killing it. Jim Beam Stakes winners were winning Triple Crown races. The Kentucky Cup, we had Thunder Gulch. Mariah’s Storm – the dam of Giant’s Causeway – beating Serena’s Song. Tabasco Cat. Silver Charm in a dead-heat with Wild Rush.

“But Indiana got (casino) riverboats, and Ohio got whole-card simulcasting and overnight we lost about 35 percent of our business. Jerry got tired of trying to convince the state legislature to give Turfway some form of expanded gambling. So he sold the track and got out of horse racing.”

Thayer’s next stop was as Vice President/Event Management for the Breeders’ Cup Ltd. He ran for the State Senate in 2003 with the blessing of then-President D.G. Van Clief – before leaving and opening Thayer Communications and Consulting LLC.

“I was there for the courtship, the marriage and divorce of the NTRA (National Thoroughbred Racing Association) and the Breeders’ Cup. Talk about a missed opportunity that I think we’re still paying the price for 20 years later. Industry infighting. People being worried about their slice of the pie, rather than being concerned with growing the pie. I saw it all unravel right before my eyes.

“I stayed on for several years. As long as D.G. was there, I was in good shape. We made some adjustments to my job at the Breeders’ Cup (to accommodate his work in the General Assembly). That was during the early days of cell-phone technology. D.G. understood, because his father served in the Virginia General Assembly, in the same seat once held by Thomas Jefferson. D.G. knew what it took to be a citizen legislator, and he couldn’t have been more supportive. I’ve been really, really lucky to work for some great guys.”

That was 2006 when Van Clief announced he was retiring at the end of the year and the Breeders’ Cup and NTRA soon thereafter announced they would be ending their joint operations. Thayer, upon the recommendation of sports-marketing titan Jim Host, left to create Thayer Communications & Consulting. The Breeders’ Cup was a client through the 2007 Breeders’ Cup at Monmouth Park, which Thayer had been instrumental in planning.  Meanwhile, his role was growing as a citizen legislator, championing horse-racing issues.

“I championed horse-racing and bourbon issues, which dovetail perfectly with my philosophy of removing artificial barriers to free enterprise.”

The racing issue you’re perhaps best identified with is spear-heading support for Senate Bill 120 in February 2021 to protect Historical Horse Racing gaming. I think a lot of people don’t realize how recent and how critical that was, that had it not passed — and 40 percent of the legislators voted against — that Kentucky almost assuredly would be down to only Churchill and Keeneland.

“Yeah, it was a very high anxiety time for me. Because I understood exactly what was at stake. And remember, HHR had been operating for about 10 years based on a series of positive judicial decisions. Then in the fall of 2020, the (Kentucky) Supreme Court essentially reversed itself, basically changed its collective mind and said it’s going to require an act of the Legislature. You have several companies — Churchill Downs, Kentucky Downs, Keeneland, Red Mile and others — that had invested a lot of money in infrastructure in Kentucky. But if HHR went away, it threatened everything. The whole thing could have collapsed, and we could just be left with Keeneland in the spring and fall and a very short Kentucky Derby meet at Churchill Downs.

“I’m normally not a sky-is-falling kind of guy. But it was pretty clear that this was live or die for the horse industry. And we were able to make that case to enough people to get it passed. But it was very, very close. Even when we went to the floor to vote for it in the Senate, we thought we had more votes than we did. Some people changed their mind, and leadership didn’t know about it. Fortunately we had some people in some rural districts take some really, really courageous votes. Two guys from Eastern Kentucky, Phillip Wheeler and Johnny Turner — and of course Johnny just passed away, very tragic — they saw what happened to the coal industry. They told me they did not want that to happen to the horse industry — even though both of them were getting tremendous pressure from their districts to vote no.

“I predicted that it wouldn’t be long before we had the best year-round racing circuit in North America. I’m very gratified that is the case, and we still have room for growth. And it almost didn’t happen. I can’t reveal too many details about what happened behind the scenes, but it was a really tough vote. It was a team effort, a lot of people were on our side and we got it done. I think it passed (the Senate) with 22 votes — 15 Republicans and seven Democrats — and it needed 20 to pass.”

Thayer also was instrumental in the 2022 legislation that standardized the excise tax on every pari-mutuel wager placed in Kentucky — raising what online betting platforms pay while keeping HHR at its profitable rate. But it also reduced breakage so bet payouts are rounded down to the nearest penny, and — a provision near and dear to Thayer — allowed Kentucky Thoroughbred Development Fund money to go on straight claiming races. He pushed through in 2004 creation of the breeders’ incentive funds financed through the 6-percent sales tax on stud fees. He also was appointed by both Republican and Democratic governors to the Equine Drug Research Council, which recommends equine medication regulation and testing policies to the racing commission. 

“It really modernized medication use in Kentucky.”

All sounds good except — a lot of horsemen might add — for your role in restricting the anti-bleeder medication Lasix. Now that you’re a horse owner, do you appreciate it more the importance of allowing horses to run on Lasix?

“I might have been wrong about that. But I wasn’t wrong on the sort of Wild Wild West in Kentucky where you could give Lasix and an adjunct bleeder medication. You could give Bute and Banamine right up to four hours before a race. We did a lot of really good reforms that kind of led the way in the country, and a lot of states followed us. Look, I also got — I think in 2011 — an interstate compact law passed that would allow Kentucky to enter into a compact with other states for consistent and standardized medication rules. I was for standardization before it was cool.

“I could tell a federal law was coming at some point. I wasn’t thrilled about a federal law. I’m a big 10th Amendment states’ rights guy. So I wanted to pre-empt it by passing the interstate compact. The problem is no other state followed our lead.

What about the Mid-Atlantic compact?

“It never took off. And the rest, as they say, is history. Ten years later, HISA passed and here we are…. I told both Senator McConnell and Congressman Barr that I disagreed with them on HISA, and I actually advocated for reforms to HISA in Congress. It’s the one major area of disagreement I have with both those men, who I hold in high regard.”

The HISA people, along with Alan Foreman, want to say compacts have been tried and it didn’t work. You would say, “It’s a different era now. Give it a chance”?

“He is right that nobody really wanted to sign up for a compact because all the states liked having their own rules. But now, having seen the flawed implementation of HISA, I think if we started it over again, the compact approach could work; in the major and mid-major racing states, we could get some reforms. Because I am for standardizing the rules across jurisdictions. I always have been. We’ll see. It’s going to be up to the Supreme Court now, which I predicted from the start.”

Are you going to predict which way it (the legal challenges to HISA’s constitutionality) goes?

“No. I think it could go either way. I think both sides need to be prepared that it could go either way. I do know this: Justice Samuel Alito is not a big fan of the administrative state or the Chevron Doctrine. Court watchers tell me HISA is a great place for him to make the case to not only eliminate HISA but to strike a major blow against the administrative state.”

Since he became CEO of the National HBPA, Eric Hamelback has pushed for national uniformity — but uniformity that makes sense and actually helps the horse.

“Oh, I agree.”

What about the RHSA? (Alternative legislation that, if the Supreme Court strikes down HISA, the HBPA is supporting for leading to a national compact for uniformity while very much using the original racing commissions.)

“If HISA is struck down by the Supreme Court, I’d say that bill is the best alternative. From what I know, it would give states input into their rules but could get us to uniformity without all the punitive, due process and transparency questions that we’ve had with HISA.”

You’ve been involved in horse ownership before, but you’ve really jumped in at a greater level with your investment in a group of CJ Thoroughbreds’ horses, it seems.

“It’s very hard to try to compete at the very top and get to graded-stakes races. But I like Corey Johnsen’s approach. We have a lot of fun, and I think I’ve won almost 50 races with them. Having a filly like Hang the Moon qualify for the Breeders’ Cup is kind of a dream come true for a kid from small-town Michigan. It might be a once-in-a-lifetime thing.”

As your ownership interests have expanded, has it changed your opinion from a regulatory standpoint, from a lawmaker standpoint?

“I think it’s made me more well-rounded. I’ve got track management experience. Now I have ownership experience. I’ve got legislative and regulatory experience. It helped me become a better advocate for the entire industry, when I became involved in a new part of it.”

You announced a year out that 2024 would be your last in the Senate. Any remorse?

“No. Look, I slayed a lot of dragons. I really am content looking back, especially the last three or four years for the horse industry: HHR, the tax modernization of HHR, penny breakage, KTDF on claiming races, banning the ‘gray’ games, getting sports betting passed and requiring only racetracks could host the retail sportsbooks, giving racetracks a pari-mutuel product to new bettors. That and a whole host of non-equine and public policy wins, I just decided now is a good time.

“I want to try to build my consulting business up to a more respectable level and get back into the racetrack side of the business. Run my Kentucky Senator Bourbon company with my partner and travel. I’ve had a lifelong bucket list to see the world’s biggest races and to see as many racetracks as possible. I’ve never been to the Fair Grounds (in New Orleans) because it’s always during the legislative session and I can’t get away. I’m going to go down for probably Risen Star Stakes Day. I’ve never been to the Tampa Bay Derby, and I love Tampa Bay Downs. I want to go to Colonial Downs for the Virginia Derby. I’ve been doing a lot of European racing. I might go to Dubai, Australia.

“I want to work on a new chapter, write a new chapter and see what is out there for me.”

What advice do you have for a state like California? They will host the Breeders’ Cup for the third straight year in 2025 at Del Mar. Is that going to be the last Breeders’ Cup in California? Is there even going to be a racing industry there? They have a horrible relationship with their state legislature. It seems to me that historical horse racing could be the savior for California racing.

“First of all, I’d like to say that on January 1, I’m a free agent, and I’m happy to help people if they seek it out. We need California to survive and thrive. But the closing of Golden Gate is a frightening situation for the industry. I think there are a lot of legitimate questions about Santa Anita’s future. A California without Santa Anita would be devastating to the entire industry. Having said that, California racing needs to figure out a way to solve its own problems.

“No. 1, the pari-mutuel pool is sliced up in so many different ways. If everybody could get in a room and take a look at the revenue share on the pari-mutuel splits, they could probably have an instant purse increase if some of the factions that get some of the money gave it up to go into purses. Secondly, the answer lies in Sacramento. Sacramento was heavily influenced by the Indian tribe casinos. They were able to kill a sports-betting ballot initiative last year. I think HHR would be a great solution to have just at racetracks. It would be a huge success. There’s enough population to go around. But the industry has got to try to come to some sort of agreement with the Indian tribes, and then go to Sacramento with an agreement on HHR and revenues going forward.”

Sounds like somewhere Sacramento didn’t get the message about green space, tourism, jobs. They haven’t gotten the message about horse racing, that horses equal jobs.

“What it looks like to me, in the next 5-10 years, there are going to be the states that have and the states that have not. The ‘haves’ are the states like Kentucky, New York, Arkansas, Virginia, Maryland — where they’ve been able to build relationships with legislators and convince them of the importance of the horse industry, all those states that had positive legislative wins. For states that are going to survive, they have to have positive relationships with legislators and they’re going to have to seek the same kinds of wins we had in Kentucky — and the same kind of wins that businesses and industries in various sectors get every year in every state capitol in America.

“Racing isn’t asking for a subsidy or a handout or even a big tax credit. It’s just asking for the tools to compete. That’s what we did in Kentucky. That’s what they’re doing in Virginia. What they did in Arkansas.”

Passing the 2021 HHR legislation was envisioned as a catalyst to growth in economic development and employment beyond just horse racing. Have you seen the last 3 1/2 years what you wanted to see, expected to see once the legislature protected historical horse racing?

“We’re talking billions (spent by track owners) since that bill passed almost four years ago. Billions. I’ve been to every racetrack in Kentucky now, and you can see it everywhere, the positive effect it’s had. The tracks are either getting renovated or getting built or getting built out. Look at Turfway. Being open year-round for stabling is not only good for the horsemen who are training there, but their staff has to live up there. It’s having a positive effect on the northern Kentucky economy. That’s just one example.”

Another is the harness-racing industry.

“We saved thoroughbred racing and allowed it to grow from an already position of strength. The standardbred industry was on its back. We brought it back from the dead. I went to the Breeders’ Crown and the Hambletonian this year at The Meadowlands, and all people wanted to talk about was Kentucky and buying homes and farms and bringing mares to Kentucky.”