BETTING AGAINST BEASLEY
JONES, BOB
BETTING AGAINST BEASLEY by Bob Jones SIX MONTHS AGO, JIM HODGES had no name recognition, no issues, and no money—not the best way to start a campaign against a popular governor. What he did have...
...The situation in South Carolina is different in that voters aren’t being asked directly about the lottery, video poker, or anything else related to gambling...
...Videopoker machines in South Carolina take in more than $2 billion annually, with as much as $600 million going into owners’ pockets...
...In Alabama, another state with low test scores and high church attendance, the lottery issue is having a similar effect...
...What he did have was a potential backer named Fred Collins, owner of many of the 30,000 video-poker machines that dot gas stations and convenience stores across South Carolina...
...Though Hodges said he could not provide a more accurate number, no one doubts that the figure is huge: In addition to TV, gambling interests are funding radio ads, billboards, bumper stickers, and direct mail...
...During his tenure in the state House, Hodges was known as one of the most outspoken opponents of both video poker and the lottery...
...Still, state politicians across the country worry that Hodges’s out-of-the-blue campaign may embolden the gambling industry to export its successful tactics...
...With no end to the free-fall in sight, Beasley dropped his opposition to a statewide referendum on the lottery and tried instead to focus on the source of his challenger’s cash...
...Last week, internal polls for both campaigns were showing the race in a statistical dead heat...
...A spokesperson for Gov...
...Not so in South Carolina, where David Beasley estimates that about half the money propping up his challenger comes from gambling promoters outside the state...
...But in Alabama, which currently has no casinos or videopoker machines, the lottery issue seems to be standing on its own, without cash infusions from the gambling industry...
...That may not be their only major purchase of the political season...
...Siegelman has all but turned the election into a referendum on the lottery, much the way Zell Miller did in capturing the Georgia governor’s chair in 1990...
...With attacks coming from all sides, political analysts speculate that the Democrats may have overplayed their hand...
...Though GOP gubernatorial nominee Dan Lungren opposed the measure, his party refused to follow suit after assemblyman Brett Granlund circulated a memo pointing out that 62 Republican candidates had received donations from Indian tribes...
...5, which would allow expanded gambling on Indian reservations, is on track to become the most expensive initiative in state history, with the two sides expected to spend more than $60 million...
...Press investigations at the time failed to turn up evidence of the alleged affair, and Beasley has called on Hodges to demand Harpootlian’s resignation...
...Of course they’re alarmed” by the gambling industry’s new high-stakes strategy, he says...
...A group called the Palmetto League has taken to the airwaves with ads criticizing Beasley’s 1996 attempt to remove the Confederate flag from atop the statehouse...
...South Carolina voters are beginning to express concern that the normally genteel political process has turned so nasty...
...Under growing fear of a backlash, Hodges belatedly called on Collins and other gambling operators to halt their independent expenditures on his behalf...
...Sporting a Georgia Bulldogs T-shirt, the clerk tells South Carolinians, “Those Georgia lottery tickets y’all buy pretty much pay for our world-class preschools...
...In August his margin had shrunk from 21 to 15 points, and by early October he led by only single digits...
...Charges that gambling advocates were pumping up to $2 million a week into the race drew gasps in the press and indignant denials from Democrats...
...Nor have they stopped with the gambling issue per se...
...Louis and Kansas City, boasted that it had signed up 10,000 new voters by Labor Day...
...That message resonates with pro-business voters who worry that poor education will make their state less competitive, yet don’t want to pay higher taxes to improve the public schools...
...South Carolina is hardly the only place where gambling interests are pouring big money into politics...
...Even the extreme right wing of the governor’s own party has benefited from pro-gambling donations...
...The governor’s efforts won him the eternal gratitude of the religious Right and the undying antipathy of the gambling czars...
...Voters in search of milk or eggs can’t run into a convenience store without being handed a flier defending video gambling...
...Fob James, a darling of the religious Right, is trailing lottery-loving lieutenant governor Don Siegelman by up to 13 points in recent polls...
...But that was before Hodges, backed by donations from Collins and other gambling promoters, took to the airwaves with ads touting a state lottery earmarked for education...
...In Georgia, a poll last spring showed that 75 percent of voters—including almost two-thirds of self-identified weekly churchgoers—approved of their state’s lottery, which has provided some $580 million in college scholarships over the past five years...
...I am sure you will agree that California Indian tribes have demonstrated a significant commitment to our party, its candidates and our ideals,” the memo concluded after listing the beneficiaries of the Indians’ largesse...
...David Beasley, the telegenic young governor with strong ties to the religious Right, was considered unbeatable in June, when he had a 21-point lead over his unknown challenger...
...By framing the issue in terms of government spending, lottery promoters can make their cause look downright reactionary...
...Judging from poll results, the bet paid off...
...Here in Georgia, we appreciate you South Carolinians buying our lottery tickets, over $100 million worth,” says a redneck convenience- store clerk in one of the ads...
...Bob Jones is the national editor of WORLD magazine...
...Casino companies want Missouri voters to give their blessing to these landlocked boats, and they’re mounting a TV-and-billboard blitz to that end...
...Thank goodness your Gov...
...They literally bought themselves a candidate...
...As proceeds are channeled into “worthy causes” such as education, gambling is losing its punch as a moral issue...
...They’re talking about education, but all they’re interested in is profits...
...Admitting that South Carolinians are “a conservative bunch,” Hodges is calling the lottery “a voluntary tax that you only pay if you play...
...As chairman of the Republican Governors Association, Beasley says he has heard from colleagues keeping a wary eye on his race...
...They’re going to try to buy this election...
...James said Siegelman’s support of the lottery had not won him large donations from out-of-state gambling interests...
...They want to turn South Carolina into Atlantic City south,” he complains...
...He sees the lottery as a first step in conditioning voters to endorse an ever-wider array of gambling options...
...For those in the middle, emotions are more complex...
...More than half the state’s casinos are “boats in moats,” which the state supreme court has said violate the terms of the initiative that legalized gambling in the first place...
...They’re using the lottery as a smoke screen...
...In Missouri, meanwhile, casino operators are mobilizing to pass a ballot initiative that would protect riverboat casinos that never actually ply the rivers...
...Riverboats across the state were turned into voter-registration sites, and a single company, with boats in both St...
...Despite polls showing that roughly two-thirds of South Carolinians favor a lottery like Georgia’s, Beasley has managed to keep the question off the ballot for four years...
...With little to lose, Hodges bet his entire gubernatorial bid on the gambling issue, defying prohibitive odds in one of the most religious and conservative states in the country...
...Collins and his allies are bankrolling the state’s Democratic party, whose chairman, Dick Harpootlian, is a lawyer representing the gambling industry...
...A Beasley-sponsored initiative to ban the industry passed the state House of Representatives last year, but Republicans in the Senate failed to overcome a Democratic filibuster...
...California’s Prop...
...Harpootlian was allegedly behind the recent resurrection of two-year-old allegations of an affair between Beasley and a press secretary—charges that the governor, his wife, and the former employee all flatly deny...
...When he started his campaign, he was broke, so he sold out to the organized- gambling crowd,” according to the governor...
...As you might expect, here in Georgia, we luuuv David Beasley...
...When you add it all up, the numbers are unbelievable,” Beasley says...
...More significantly, Democrats are finding the lottery question to be a convenient wedge for splitting the GOP’s religious and economic factions...
...But such efforts are largely expected from an industry that has long shown its willingness to spend heavily to pass favorable initiatives...
...David Beasley won’t let y’all have a lottery...
...Indeed, Beasley says the reason for his recent flipflop on the lottery referendum was to get the focus back where it belonged—on the for-profit gambling enterprises of Fred Collins and other operators...
...Instead, gambling interests are opening their pocketbooks to defeat a politician who has stood in their way...
...As the election approaches, 18,000 riverboat employees will canvass their neighborhoods to ensure that pro-gambling voters go to the polls...
...In a state where fourth graders rank 47th in math and 46th in reading, the charge of under-funding public schools gained almost immediate traction, and Beasley’s numbers dropped like a Plinko ball...
...Though Jerry Creech, the league’s president, says he opposes video poker, he took the gambling donations to remind Republicans of their electoral base and to help communicate the group’s message that the Confederate flag “stands for our way of living...
...No one’s ever seen anything like it before...
Vol. 4 • November 1998 • No. 8
