Legislator wants to bring pari-mutuel racing to S.C.

Jeffrey Collins

Thursday, May 15, 2003 | 9:23 a.m.

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Allowing people to play the ponies in South Carolina could boost tourism and bring the state millions of dollars in revenue, Rep. John "Bubber" Snow Jr. said Tuesday.

Snow, D-Hemingway, has introduced a bill to bring pari-mutuel racing to South Carolina. The proposal must be approved as a constitutional amendment, receiving at least a two-thirds vote in the House and the Senate before going before voters.

The bill faces several hurdles before it ever goes to a vote.

First is the Lost Trust scandal more than a decade ago. The FBI used a bill to legalize pari-mutuel racing as part of a sting that paid about $30,000 in bribes to more a dozen legislators. Prosecutors got 27 convictions in the operation.

Second is the state's overall chill toward gambling. South Carolina outlawed video gambling nearly three years ago, and little effort has been made to revive it.

Bringing any new form of gambling to South Carolina is a long shot, said House Speaker David Wilkins, R-Greenville. Or as Rep. John Graham Altman put it: "Don't bet on that horse."

"I don't think people want any more state-sponsored gambling in this state," Altman, R-Charleston, said. "But I might be wrong."

Horse and other types of racing could bring much more money and a higher class of people than video gambling and involves skill that is absent from lottery games, Snow said.

"Pari-mutuel racing and horse racing in South Carolina would create jobs. The lottery, I don't know how many jobs it created," said Bobby Anderson, president of the South Carolina Horsemen's Council.

Also, Snow said, pari-mutuel racing itself had nothing to do with Lost Trust and it would be unfair to link the two.

As Snow discussed his plan on the south side of the Statehouse on Tuesday, a handler led a race horse and jockey in circles on a small patch of grass not far from the statue of Confederate general and former Gov. Wade Hampton on horseback.

"We raise some of the finest horses in the world," said Sen. Jake Knotts, R-West Columbia, who is considering introducing a similar bill in the Senate.

Plus, the lottery has opened the door. "Gambling's gambling," Knotts said.

Horse racing would bring in more money than other forms of gambling, said Othniel Wienges Jr., who has raised and raced horses for decades. Tourism would increase and trainers who currently ship their animals out of state to race could stay here, he said.

"One horse means two jobs -- not just trainers, but parking attendants, too," he said.

Raising horses is a booming industry in South Carolina, but much of the money is shipped out of state because the horses can't race here, said Judy Ballew, who raises quarter horses at White Eagle Farms near Clinton.

Ballew owns about 15 horses and figures she spends $12,000 a year to send each of her horses to Oklahoma to race.

Tracks in Aiken, Camden, Charleston, Elloree and Cedar Swamp in Williamsburg County would be ready to use immediately if pari-mutuel racing became legal, Snow said.

Snow also has a personal reason for wanting to legalize pari-mutuel racing.

He remembers the days his family raced seven thoroughbreds at Washington Park Race Track in Myrtle Beach. Harness races took place on Wednesdays and Sundays before about 2,500 people for a few years after World War II, he said.

Snow said the House passed a bill allowing pari-mutuel racing in 1947, but the Senate never took action on the proposal before a state Supreme Court ruling shut the door.