Foes of lottery saw support

Web posted Thursday, November 9, 2000

 Have a thought? Go to the @ugusta Forums.

By Margaret N. O'Shea
South Carolina Bureau

AIKEN - If local lottery foes had been betting folks, they would have put big odds on Aiken County to reject a state-run lottery in Tuesday's elections, no matter what other South Carolina voters said about it.

They would have lost that bet. Aiken voters went for a lottery to help fund education 27,035 to 22,530.

In the election pollsters wouldn't even gamble on because it looked too close to call, 56 percent of the voters statewide called for a lottery and 44 percent voted no.

A day later, anti-lottery forces in Aiken were trying to figure where they'd misread the electorate.

Aiken County Republican Party Chairman David Nix said the vote could mean a shift in local voting patterns.``I think we may be seeing a voting bloc that will put Republicans in office but leans more liberal where social issues are involved. It may have something to do with the large number of retirees who have moved into Aiken County in the last decade - many of them from states that have lotteries - and they just didn't see it as any big deal.''

But that development wasn't apparent leading into the vote in a county that in 1984 was one of only 12 voting not to allow video poker within its borders, then became one of the state's hardest fighters against the games when they became established anyway.

Some foes, including Aiken Republican Sen. Greg Ryberg, equated a lottery with video poker. He was convinced that a state-run lottery would eventually include the same kinds of machines banished just this year.

In the weeks before Tuesday's vote,Mr. Nix, the GOP chairman, had driven to Rock Hill with 1,000 ``No Lottery'' yard signs and had no trouble finding homes for them, he said. County Councilman Rick Osbon stored some of the signs at his downtown dry cleaning business, but not for long. People stopped by to pick up stacks of them. He saw others snatched up at his church, Millbrook Baptist.

But Tuesday night, as precinct after precinct reported, the unthinkable happened. Aiken County voters approved a constitutional referendum that would allow South Carolina to become the 38th state with a lottery.

``As I saw the votes coming in last night,'' Mr. Nix said Wednesday, ``I said, `Well, we've got a lottery.' I knew if Aiken County didn't reject it by 70 percent there wasn't a chance in the world that the rest of the state would.''

Mr. Osbon said Wednesday that he'd expected Aiken County to go the other way, ``but I think the bottom line, being a border state, and county being on the state line, people just saw so much money going over into Georgia and thought it might as well be spent here.''

Some state lotteries are not performing to expectations, but Georgia's has done well since it began in 1993. It pulled in $3.7 billion in the past two years and funneled $1.2 billion into education.

South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges wants to model an education lottery after Georgia's, and his re-election in 2002 could ride on how well he pulls that off.

Mr. Nix said heavily Republican Aiken County could have expected to pull some partisan votes against the Democratic governor's plan. ``But I think the time is gone when we can expect people to pull the party lever and go along with every aspect of the party line - not either of the two major parties. The lottery vote proves that.''

Reach Margaret N. O'Shea at (803) 279-6895.

Submit Your Opinion Name: Email: Enter your comments here