Alabama Bingo and California

What does an obscure lawsuit surrounding the gay marriage ban in California have to do with the current bingo question in Alabama? Maybe more than you think. Recently, there was an attempt to keep the names of donors a secret in the fight over gay marriage in California. Some argued that donors to the campaigns in support of a ban could be threatened if their names were made public. Furthermore, they argued it was a free speech issue. They told us publicity and sunshine were limits on speech. People would not speak out with their money, they said, if they had to identify themselves. I personally believe this argument is a stretch. I think the framers of our Constitution had stump speeches on the town square and handbills on trees in mind when they wrote our First Amendment. This idea has little to do with the obfuscated political action committees and slick TV commercials that are our political system today.

So what does this have to do with the latest tiff in Alabama over electronic bingo or slot machines?

Well, we already have a problem with sunshine in our state. Our problem is with the political variety of sunshine and not thermonuclear radiation. Once again, Alabama ranks 49^th in campaign disclosure by the respected campaigndisclosure.org. So along with being ranked 45^th in education, 29^th in being safe from crime and 43^rd in highway conditions among all states, Alabama may also be near the bottom in political sunshine. We already have de-facto secrecy among political donors. We have this situation without a court’s ruling. The political sun doesn’t shine in Alabama.

So what does political sun have to do with Bingo? Well, if history is our guide, Alabama voters may be voting counter to their wishes. Voters could be confused because they are not able to associate donors with causes or candidates. A great example might be a 1999 push for video poker in a few counties. Polls showed in the August before the vote that 61 percent were in favor of video poker. By August only 51 percent were in favor. So what changed?

One of the things that changed was media blitz by Ralph Reed and the Christian Coalition. The Coalition pointed out moral issues associated with gambling and went on a state-wide get-out-the-vote campaign. This is where sunshine in funding and the messenger become important. If Alabamians had known the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians were funding the Christian Coalition’s moral outrage about video poker, Alabamians may have been a little less receptive to Coalition’s message. A congressional report on the subject outlined how Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition and Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Relief were used by the Choctaws to insure their casinos in Philadelphia, Mississippi would not have Alabama competition. There were even plans to use Jim Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, a multi-media Christian group, in ads bought with over a million dollars of Choctaw monies.

You can bet, pardon the pun, the Choctaws and other gambling interests are gearing up as we speak. They won’t contact you directly over slot machines or bingo. They will use someone you trust like Jim Dobson. What’s worse, we won’t know the difference because Alabama politicians don’t want you to know. Some of the people in those issue groups like the Christian Coalition won’t know either. The money will be transferred from political action committee (PAC) to PAC, washed and laundered through so many people we won’t know where it came from. Websites which easily hash out who gave how much to whom in other states won’t be able to make sense of the Alabama system. In the upside down world of Alabama politics, the politicians and groups most adamantly against slot machines may be ironically taking the most money from out-of-state gambling interests.

Editor’s Note:

I went to the Focus on the Family website and asked for a response to this article. I will leave it you to decide if the question was answered.