The parties behind Lottery Technology Enterprises, the firm that’s run the District’s lottery for more than 25 years, have split up, likely ending the chances for politically connected businessman P. Leonard Manning to continue his control over the city’s numbers games.

According to three sources with knowledge of the situation, lottery provider GTECH and Manning’s New Tech Games will not partner on a bid for the latest lottery contract, bids on which are due June 26. The decision ends a relationship between the companies that stretches back to the early 1980s, when Manning and GTECH together started the District’s first daily lotto game.

Bob Vincent, a GTECH spokesperson, confirms that his company is no longer committed to partnering with Manning et al. “We like and respect those folks,” he says, “but we are in fact looking at various options in respect to the upcoming bid.”

Manning did not respond to requests for comment.

GTECH is the king of American lottery vendors, running the majority of government sponsored games in the country. Vincent declined to speak of any other potential local partners: “Because it’s a competitive procurement, we’re going to obviously play our cards pretty close to the vest.”

The split follows a yearlong drama surrounding the award of a new contract to replace the arrangement that ends this fall. LTE last year submitted a bid to extend its hold on the contract, but the Office of the Chief Financial Officer deemed the bid inferior to that of W2I, a partnership between multinational Intralot and local partner W2Tech—run by Alaka Williams, wife of politically connected businessman Warren C. Williams Jr. The award became a political hot potato in the D.C. Council, which has to approve contracts over $1 million, resulting in the contract being essentially rejected last December.

In the middle of all of that mishegoss, LTE was fined $1.4 million by the D.C. government for a massive security breach in 2006 that led to tens of thousands of dollars in ticket fraud. LTE called the unprecedented fine politically motivated.

A new request for bids was issued last month, and changes in the weighting of various city requirements were considered to be generally favorable to LTE. But the toxic political environment remains.

What are LTE’s options from here? Limited.

Any local outfit has to partner with one of the major multinational corporations that actually design and produce lottery equipment. There’s but three big players: GTECH, Intralot, and Atlanta-based Scientific Games. GTECH, of course, threw its lot in with LTE for the original bid last year and is now uncommitted; Intralot is currently attempting to have the original award enforced through various avenues; they are reportedly wavering on whether or not to participate in the rebid. That leaves Scientific Games, which was once said to be hesitant about entering a politically fraught process but has been receiving preliminary bidding information from the CFO’s office; the company did not immediately return a call for comment. One other vendor, smallish Canadian Bank Note, has also received bidding information.

LTE’s exit opens up an opportunity for another local partner to grab a piece of the lucrative numbers contract. (You may be asking: why are these local partners necessary? LL answered that question in his column last summer.)

Much of the scuttlebutt these days surrounds the intentions of Robert L. Johnson, the BET mogul, who told the Washington Post in February that he intended to bid on the D.C. contract. His gaming-related outfit, Caribbean CAGE LLC, is run by a D.C. legal and political veteran, Bob Washington, who had incidentally been associated with a group that had lost to Manning back in the ’80s. Caribbean CAGE has recently entered into partnerships with Scientific Games to install video lottery terminals in various overseas locales. A spokesperson for Johnson denies that there’s any partnership with GTECH.

W2I, originally awarded the contract last year, has filed a protest to the rebid on the contract issued earlier this month. The upshot: The protest holds that a recent rebid should be halted, but for the time being, it will proceed, says David Umansky, spokesperson for the Office of the Chief Financial Officer.

What brought us here? Long story short:

Early last year, W2I was determined by OCFO to have won the contract to run the D.C. Lottery, beating out Lottery Technology Enterprises, which has held the contract for more than 25 years. But when the contract went to the D.C. Council for approval, it became a political hot potato, with W2I and Mayor Adrian M. Fenty on one side (the local partners are Fenty supporters Warren and Alaka Williams) and LTE (headed by connected businessman Leonard Manning) and Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray and Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham on the other. Last December, the council essentially voted to reject the contract, and in February the city canceled the original solicitation.

That cleared the way for a new solicitation, which was issued earlier this month. The new request for proposals changes the rules on which bids will be judged, leading to claims that the contract is being steered to LTE. And now comes the W2I protest of that solicitation.

This latest maneuver is part of what LL is told is thus far a $1.5 million campaign by W2I to enforce the original contract. The partnership has hired high-powered law firm Jones Day to press its case. That includes a Contract Appeals Board protest filed this spring, which argues that the contract never should have gone to the D.C. Council in the first place and, furthermore, that the council did not reject the contract on the proper basis. That protest is still pending, and it's on those grounds that this week's protest was filed. Since the original contract award is still under dispute, W2I's lawyers hold, a replacement bid can't be considered under District contracting law.

That OCFO plans to proceed with the rebid is puzzling, says spokesperson Crystal Wright, who represents W2I partner Intralot. "It's whether or not they're going to abide by the rules....The D.C. Code is very clear on this."

Will this whole thing be settled when the CAB rules on W2I's protests? Perhaps not: In a February letter to OCFO protesting the cancellation of the original solicitation, a W2I lawyer said his client "will be compelled to seek its full measure of redress from the courts."

Meanwhile, the lottery remains in the hands of LTE—a vendor assessed $1.4 million in fines for performance breakdowns. Those fees, Umansky says, have yet to be paid.