by Dean A. Hoffman

Dean Hoffman

Columbus, OH — As I watched the first batch of yearlings parade through the ring at Harrisburg on Monday, I felt like John McCain probably did as he watched the early returns last night.

“This isn’t looking very good,” I said to myself. Maybe McCain used stronger words.

Voters across America made their decision yesterday while the buyers are still making decisions in Harrisburg. There won’t be a new casino in Ohio but there will be slots in Maryland.

In the Pennsylvania capital, it’s a buyers’ market in Harrisburg, but that comes to no surprise to anyone. Everyone anticipated the sale to be down; they only differed on how bad it would be.

An economic meltdown doesn’t bode well for breeders with yearlings to peddle. The upheaval started before the Lexington sale and certainly affected the averages there, but far more dramatic drops took place in October. If you’ve had the nerve to look at your investment statements recently, you know exactly how bad it is. But you’re not alone. Misery loves company.

Breeders selling in Harrisburg are hapless victims of bad timing, just as the sellers at Keeneland are. Prices are down significantly in the huge fall Thoroughbred sale there.

Anyone at Harrisburg could see what was happening in the ring. The sense of electricity was missing. Yearlings that should sell for $40,000 were suddenly lucky to bring half that. Yearlings that figured to bring six-figure prices stopped around $70,000. Some well-bred yearlings seemed to attract little interest.

Sure, there were some magic moments when buyers with deep pockets wanted a prize yearling. The bids came fast and furious then, but such horses were the exception rather than the rule.

The final day of the yearling segment is today and then the sale converts into a mixed venue. Then you get a new group of horses and often new buyers.

The presidential election is now in the books and the Obama partisans have the right to party and celebrate. The McCain partisans may feel they have the right to complain for the next four years, but we must all unite behind our new president. His is not an easy job.

For those of us in a battleground state like Ohio, today brings a reprieve from the non-stop TV spots and robo-calls. It will actually be nice to turn on the tube and see hucksters selling carpet and used cars. That’ll be proof that life is back to normal.

In Ohio, horsemen can celebrate the defeat of a proposed casino that would have decimated racing in a state already suffering. This is the fourth time Ohioans have snubbed the casino issue and this year the anti-casino majority was more than 60 percent.

In Maryland, voters said yes to placement of 15,000 slot machines throughout the state.

Massachusetts voters sounded a death knell for dog racing in the state by approving a measure that prohibited betting at dog tracks effective on Jan. 1, 2010.

We live in extraordinary times.