When I hear his name, the first image that pops into my head is Carol Anne in “The Poltergeist II” moving exclaiming, “They’re back!” Jon Kyl, one of the men behind the poker industry-changing Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (UIGEA), is coming back to the US Senate. If any poker players suddenly felt a cold chill this past Monday, now you know why and you can thank Arizona Governor Doug Ducey.

On Monday, Ducey appointed Kyl to represent the state in the Senate. He is taking the seat of John McCain, who recently passed away from cancer. The only good news is that Kyl cannot stay until the regular term would have ended in 2022 unless he’s elected. According to Arizona law, a special election must be held in 2020 to vote on who will fill the seat until the end of the term. Kyl has already said that he’s not interested in serving out the rest of the term but, once he gets in, he’ll more than likely go back on his word.

Kyl developed an animosity of the gambling industry well before helping craft the UIGEA. In the 1990s, he wrote a piece of legislation, along with Representative Bob Goodlatte, that sought to prohibit online gambling except for dog and horse racing. Apparently, some forms of online gambling are good, others are bad.

The bill didn’t make it through the channels and Kyl was defeated. Determined not to make the same mistake twice, he and Goodlatte decided to do what good politicians do – cheat. They snuck the UIGEA inside another bill, the Security and Accountability For Every Port Act – a bill that was entirely unrelated, but that was known to receive approval – and the rest, as they say, is history. The UIGEA was never discussed, debated, dissected or otherwise reviewed by Congress before being approved.