Gambling foes plot strategy in the South

Reed Branson

Monday, Sept. 27, 1999 | 11:48 a.m.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- National gambling opponents who believe they have slowed the legalization of casinos and lotteries around the nation are looking to the South to once again make gambling illegal.

About 100 members of the National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling from more than 30 states met "behind enemy lines" in Mississippi over the weekend to trade strategies for fighting the expansion of gambling and, ultimately, outlawing gambling through legislation, lawsuits and ballot initiatives.

"In the Midwest, I think we've been able to stop it or slow it up. It looks to me the South is the place we find our first opportunities to rout it out," said Tom Grey, a United Methodist minister in Illinois who is executive director of the organization, during a training session entitled "The Battle for the South."

Grey pointed to an October lottery referendum in Alabama and a November referendum in South Carolina in which he hoped voters would outlaw an estimated 34,000 video poker machines. Gambling foes also pointed to a 1996 referendum in Louisiana in which voters in 33 parishes shut down video poker arcades.

Weston Ware, the organization's incoming president, said that in his home state, Texas, gambling opponents were trying to pressure county prosecutors to shut down "eight-liner" gambling machines, similar to slot machines, that provide payoffs. And Florida opponents are fighting to end the cruises to nowhere that leave from their ports.

Nevertheless, these gambling opponents acknowledged the size of the task. Grey said the group intentionally picked Mississippi, the third-largest gambling jurisdiction in the nation, to highlight what he called a "pathological" state.

"Gambling policy drives public policy," Grey said. "This is Las Vegas-South. Whatever gambling wants, gambling gets."

Although casino supporters here point to thousands of jobs and millions of tax dollars paid to local and state governments, Grey predicted that once "monumental pain comes home" from the gambling boom, voters here would begin pressuring lawmakers to end casino gambling.

During the convention, gambling opponents swapped war stories and expressed dismay at what many perceived to be a lack of political leadership on the issue.

Louisiana gambling opponent Lacy Thompson said gambling opponents felt betrayed in his state when Republican Gov. Mike Foster brokered a deal to put a video poker referendum on the ballot that allowed each parish to decide whether to allow the machines.

Ware said Texas Gov. George W. Bush had been a vocal gambling opponent, "but I understand the governor is less committal when he gets outside of Texas ... I hope he continues to be strongly against gambling, but I'm not assured of that."

Larry Page, with the Arkansas Faith and Ethics Council, said Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is "willing to speak out against gambling when he's asked, but only when he's asked ... He's been a bit of a disappointment on gambling."

Page also warned his fellow anti-gambling crusaders against accepting money from casino interests in neighboring states, saying a representative of Mississippi's casinos offered about $2 million in 1996 to fight initiatives on the Arkansas ballot.

"Never ever accept gambling money from another jurisdiction to fight it in yours," he pleaded. "We'd rather lose ... How we fight the battle is more important."