Politico – Billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson’s mission to ban Internet gambling just got a major opponent — a coalition backed by MGM International and other Washington powerhouses.

The newly minted Coalition for Consumer and Online Protection is going up Wednesday with an initial three-week, $250,000 online and print ad buy to campaign against a federal online gambling ban. The ad buy is focused predominately on the Washington, D.C., market, but also will have presence in Nevada.

The coalition has also hired some heavy hitters to help them make their case. Former Rep. Mike Oxley (R-Ohio), who served as Financial Services Committee chairman when the Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act of 2006 passed, will be the coalition’s spokesman. Also on board: top Democratic operative Jim Messina; former Rep. Mary Bono (R-Calif.), now of FaegreBD Consulting; and Kristen Hawn of Granite Integrated Strategies.

It also engaged North Star Opinion Research’s Dan Judy and Whit Ayres to do a poll for the coalition at the end of January which found 33 percent of voters “strongly” oppose a ban comparedwith 22 percent “strongly” supporting it. From the 1,000 interviews the pollsters also found that 74 percent of voters prefer the state-by-state legalization approach compared to a nationwide ban.