Last-minute legal wrangling fails to save video gambling in S. Carolina

Dan Lewerenz

Monday, July 3, 2000 | 11:34 a.m.

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- A prominent South Carolina video gambling operator kept an ace up his sleeve but despite the last-minute legal maneuvers, the high-stakes battle ended with the industry folding.

The plug was pulled on the $3 billion industry at midnight Friday as a statewide ban went into effect 14 years after video gambling was legalized in South Carolina.

"Bored. That's what I'm going to be -- bored," said Wanda Rose, playing at the Double Diamond in Columbia. "I mean, it's my money. I think that I should be able to spend it however I want."

The end came only after a late-night legal drama that reached the state Supreme Court less than two hours before the midnight deadline.

Businessman Henry Ingram, who owns five casinos, won a temporary injunction from a Circuit Court judge allowing him to keep his video poker machines running. However, the state Supreme Court shot that down late Friday night and denied other requests for emergency injunctions.

Operators were supposed to have their machines turned off by midnight Friday. Authorities checking on compliance in two counties found nine machines still on and seized them, State Law Enforcement Chief Robert Stewart said.

Authorities have already checked about 2,000 of the state's 9,400 gambling locations. Stewart says the operation will continue until a week from now, when all machines will have to be out of South Carolina.

Thirty minutes before the midnight deadline, Linda Browder, manager of Airport Bingo in Cayce, closed down.

"The last player had $100 that I was able to pay him," she said. "I gave him his $100 and his ticket as a souvenir. He said he would keep it."

Video poker became legal in South Carolina after a lawmaker slipped a provision into a bill in 1986. Anti-gambling forces fought hard to outlaw the machines, a battle that came to a head in 1998 when then-Gov. David Beasley, a Republican, called video gambling "a cancer on South Carolina" and vowed to get rid of the industry.

Gambling operators helped defeat Beasley's re-election bid, pouring money into the campaign of Democrat Jim Hodges, who won the governor's race with a promise to let voters decide whether the games should remain legal.

Last year, the Legislature approved a bill that banned video gambling unless voters decided in a referendum to keep the machines. A few months later, the state Supreme Court threw out the referendum, but upheld the ban.

"I'm glad it's out," Margaret Perry said as she played at D J's Video Games in Columbia. "It's caused a lot of problems in my life. It's been a detriment to my spiritual life."