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But this is not merely another case of Southern upheaval. While Goliath -- powerful national gambling interests -- is hardly down for the count, these defeats should force presidential candidates to address the dramatic nationwide expansion of gambling. The discourse not only should provide amusing rhetorical acrobatics, but could perhaps help Bill Bradley -- who has opposed organized gambling -- permanently relocate Al Gore back to Nashville.

The anti-gambling victories have been portrayed as the work of conservative Christians, but in fact they represent a larger political trend that cannot help but pierce the bliss of Gambling Inc. The belief that organized gambling corrupts both individuals and the political process has drawn a widening swath of voters -- a broad coalition that reaches all the way from Focus on the Family chief James Dobson to Ralph Nader. As one anti-gambling advocate says, "You can fit all of America between Dobson and Nader."

These two gambling defeats took different paths. In Alabama, where Gov. Donald Siegelman won office by promising a lottery would pump money into Alabama's dismal public school system, 61 percent of voters still supported the lottery as of late August. But the usually reliable sales pitch -- let's support gambling for the children's sake -- was beaten back with the politically liberal argument that the lottery money would come out of the hides of Alabama's poor. A very rare coalition of black and white churches stepped in to lead the crusade, which voters approved, 54-46 percent, despite being outspent three to one.

The political upheaval was even more dramatic in South Carolina, where the state Supreme Court ruled this month that the $2.8 billion video poker industry must cease operations at the end of June 2000. The ruling came after a poker baron filed suit to stop an upcoming referendum; while the court agreed the referendum was unconstitutional, it also ruled that without a public referendum the games could not maintain their legal status. (Even if the referendum had been allowed to proceed, observers say the industry faced certain loss at the voting booth. Polls had indicated that as many as 70 percent of likely voters -- rallied by an unusually diverse coalition -- wanted to pull the plug on the games. )

Anti-gambling activists milked an old moral theme: that gambling offers something for nothing, therefore diminishing the role of fair and honest labor in human affairs. But the coalition also made use of more political themes: Video gambling hurts the poor; it is an economic drain; it is bad for the state's image. "I've never seen a coalition like this one," says Ed McMullen of the South Carolina Policy Council. "You had blacks and whites, rich and poor, Baptists and Jews, liberals, conservatives and libertarians, and people from every region of the state." Even the trial lawyers were in on the kill: A lawsuit alleging that video gambling represented unfair trade practices and a RICO racketeering violation was victorious in district court, and a class action against operators is in the works.

"At first people on the left didn't want to get in," says Tom Grey, head of the National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling. "They thought the anti-gambling effort was a movement by the same people who support flying the Confederate flag over the capitol. But then we got the Methodist Church on board, and in South Carolina, the Methodist Church is 20 percent black. After that, the bishops of the African Methodist Episcopal church joined, because they knew that African-Americans are getting hurt the worst. When the Chamber of Commerce signed on, it was like the cavalry coming in."

It all represented a dramatic turnaround: When Gov. David Beasley declared in 1998 his intention to shut down video poker, Democrat Jim Hodges rode a wave of gambling money into office. But as the referendum drew closer, the operators began suffering the effects of several years of bad local and national publicity. For one thing, there were the news stories: A child suffocated in a car while mom gambled away her paycheck; a poker operator was jailed for bribing a sheriff; a hit man was allegedly contracted to take out a rival operator. There was also the fact that one could not enter a one-pump gas station in the most remote part of the state without bumping into two or three video machines and a handful of poker drones.

The video operators played every card in their deck. They begged the state to tax them more heavily for the sake of public education, asserted that as many as 70,000 jobs were at stake and warned that the coalition's next targets would be liquor and rock music.

Gambling interests are also reportedly behind a statewide billboard campaign promising the elimination of the state's hated car tax if gambling were approved -- though an industry spokesman denied the connection.

Next page | McCain collects bags of gambling money