How the South Joined the Gambling Nation: The Politics of State Policy Innovation (review)

A P R I L 2 0 0 8 149 This collection offers much-needed primary evidence on the social history of the Civil War. Those interested in military developments will enjoy Miller’s perceptions of Confederate leadership and battlefield engagements . The insightful nature of the letters and McMurry’s careful annotations make this an important work for scholars and general enthusiasts of the period. VICTORIA E. OTT Birmingham-Southern College How the South Joined the Gambling Nation: The Politics of State Policy Innovation. By Michael Nelson and John Mason. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007. xiv, 263 pp. $35.00. ISBN 978-0-8071-3254-8. The authors of How the South Joined the Gambling Nation chronicle the politics of gambling in Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Gambling takes on many forms, and states pick and choose among casinos, state-run lotteries, horse or dog tracks, video poker, or charitable bingo. Every southern state supports at least one type of gambling. However different the states are from each other, the story of legalized gambling is similar in all. It starts with a state looking longingly at money that their residents dump into another state’s gambling industry. Then a Democrat claims that it is lost state revenue that can be used for education and scholarships. Finally, the state passes a constitutional amendment or law that allows gambling in the state, to the chagrin of most Republicans, Christian conservatives, and neighboring states that will now have to work harder to attract nonresident gamblers. Nelson and Mason provide systematic analysis of the conflict generated by gambling policy. One of the many benefits of a federal system is that states can experiment with public policies. If successful, those policies will be adopted by bordering states, in a process referred to as policy diffusion. While policy diffusion explains why an issue gets on a state’s agenda, it is a state’s unique internal characteristics that determine the fate of the issue. All of the states considered here had similar internal characteristics such as floundering economies, the risk of large deficits, the desire to increase funding for education, and the opportunity to raise revenue without increasing taxes. Finally, they all turned to some form of gambling as a remedy. Southern Democrats, who were still winning elections on the issue of education, sought to satisfy their constituencies (teachers and parents) and shore up their electoral base while trying to T H E A L A B A M A R E V I E W 150 avoid raising taxes. The Republican Party campaigned against the efforts to legalize gambling because their successful opposition would fragment key Democratic constituencies. Of all the chapters, those on Georgia and Alabama stand out. The authors argue that proponents of lotteries should model their campaign for a legalized lottery after Georgia’s successful education lottery and avoid the missteps of Alabama’s pro-lottery governor Don Siegelman. By copying Georgia’s lottery, Siegelman sent a message to Alabamians that it was Georgia that had the largest say in the design of the failed Alabama lottery plan. Other chapters stand alone very well. Those interested in a particular state can read the relevant chapter. The introductory and concluding chapters, however, provide the context for the case studies and analyze how they collectively inform our understanding of the similarity and differences among the states discussed. Unlike casinos, racing tracks, video poker, and charitable bingo— which are all administered by private, for-profit organizations—state-run lotteries pose a serious moral dilemma. By not explicitly delving into the moral question of whether or not state governments should be peddling lotteries to their citizenry, the authors lost the opportunity to engage the reader on this important issue. Prior to 1964, state-run lotteries were rare and gambling was illegal in most states. The need to generate revenue without increasing taxes has made lotteries the primary “voluntary tax” upon which states have capitalized; most have state-run lotteries. The unfortunate consequence is that the most vulnerable segment of society, minorities and the poor, foot the bill for middle-class whites who receive a disproportionate...