Palm Beach Kennel Club
Tom's grandfather, Art Rooney, bought the Palm Beach Kennel Club in West Palm Beach in 1969 and his father ran the business as president from 1984 until recently, when his brother, Patrick J. Rooney Jr., became president of the club. Tom Rooney lists ownership of stock in family businesses in his congressional financial disclosure form. Rooney has said that he has neither operational nor ownership responsibilities, and the stock is part of a trust with his children as beneficiaries. In 2010, Rooney stood at 346th place in terms of net worth among the members of the U.S. House.
The Palm Beach Kennel Club serves the product of yet another family business, Rooney's Old Irish Ale. The Palm Beach County Commission has approved a referendum for the November 2012 ballot to decide whether slot machines will be allowed at the Palm Beach Kennel Club. Tom's cousin Joe Rooney is a spokesman for, as well as Co-Chair and Treasurer of the coalition supporting the Palm Beach County slot machines referendum. Other Florida counties have put slot machine referendums on the November ballot, but Attorney General Palm Bondi issued an opinion that current state law does not allow slots outside of Miami-Dade and Broward counties. Joe Rooney said Palm Beach County will have several paths to follow if the referendum succeeds, including legislation and legal action.
Read more about this topic: Tom Rooney (politician), Personal Life
Famous quotes containing the words palm, beach, kennel and/or club:
“The body, what is it, Father, but a sign
To love the force that grows us, to give back
What in Thy palm is senselessness and mud?”
—Karl Shapiro (b. 1913)
“Your last words as you led the charge up the beach were, “Okay, men, let’s show ‘em whose beach this is!””
—Paddy Chayefsky (1923–1981)
“All night in the unmade park
After the railings and shrubberies
The birds the grass the trees the lake
And the wild boys innocent as strawberries
Had followed the hunchback
To his kennel in the dark.”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)
“The barriers of conventionality have been raised so high, and so strangely cemented by long existence, that the only hope of overthrowing them exists in the union of numbers linked together by common opinion and effort ... the united watchword of thousands would strike at the foundation of the false system and annihilate it.”
—Mme. Ellen Louise Demorest 1824–1898, U.S. women’s magazine editor and woman’s club movement pioneer. Demorest’s Illustrated Monthly and Mirror of Fashions, p. 203 (January 1870)