Republicans competing for the North Carolina gubernatorial nomination are showing more flexibility on the issue of a lottery than they did four years ago, but few seem to view the issue as a lynchpin in this year's campaign.
While four of six major GOP candidates make similar arguments against a numbers game, Southern Pines insurance executive George Little wants everyone to know he's different.
"Unlike most of the candidates in this race, I support the right of the people to vote on an advisory referendum on the lottery," Little said last week at a Chapel Hill candidate forum.
Democratic Gov. Mike Easley has made an "education lottery" one of his leading policy initiatives, but has failed to get authorization for a voter referendum through the Legislature during his first three years in office.
Despite polls showing a majority of voters supporting a vote, prospects for one in 2004 appear dim. House members continue to strongly oppose a referendum, which they voted down in 2002, and legislative leaders want to finish this year's session before the July 20 primary.
Easley wants a lottery's net proceeds - estimated at $250 million to $400 million annually - to be set aside to benefit public schools and his More at Four preschool initiative.
Little would also want the General Assembly to set lottery money aside to benefit the University of North Carolina and community colleges.
As board chairman of Sandhills Community College for the past 18 years, Little foresees colleges, already swelling from enrollment, using lottery proceeds to buy needed equipment.
"There's a crying need, with all the construction going on and new buildings," he told newspaper editorial writers from across the state at the forum held last Friday.
The other five major candidates don't favor a lottery, although Richard Vinroot, making his third run at the Executive Mansion, said he wouldn't try to stop a referendum on the issue.
"It's sort of a big question that the citizens of our state ought to decide," said Vinroot, who had a similar platform in 2000, when he lost to Easley. "I will do all I can to talk them out of bringing that kind of gambling to our state."
In 2000, Vinroot's two major opponents in the Republican primary both opposed a lottery and a referendum.
Both Little and Vinroot live near the border with South Carolina, which began a numbers game in 2002; more than one in 10 ticket buyers come from North Carolina. Tennessee started a lottery this year and Virginia has had one for years, meaning North Carolina is surrounded on all sides by lottery states.
Former state GOP chairman Bill Cobey, Davie County commissioner Dan Barrett and Sen. Patrick Ballantine of Wilmington all said they would oppose both a lottery and a referendum on the idea if elected.
Citing past state budgets that required cash injections from non-tax sources, Ballantine said Easley couldn't be trusted to make sure a lottery's proceeds would go to their intended use.
"How can you trust this governor with an education trust fund when he raided the Highway Fund, the Mental Health Trust Fund, the Health and Wellness Trust Fund (and) the tobacco growers' trust fund?" Ballantine asked.
Sen. Fern Shubert of Marshville, another GOP hopeful who opposes the lottery, questions the legality of referenda, except when the state is seeking voter approval to borrow money.
"It simply isn't in the (state) constitution," Shubert said. Even if legislators voted on passing a lottery independent of a referendum, she doubts it would truly generate more education spending.
Little said he wouldn't support any lottery plan unless it provided accountability to ensure that net proceeds would supplement education funds currently in the state budget.
Little's support for a lottery could help him in a tight race, if unaffiliated voters who moved to North Carolina from lottery states can be persuaded to vote in the GOP primary.
"It's one of the things that they are likely to care about," said Michael Munger, chairman of the political science department at Duke University.
While the position could gain Little some votes, lottery support may turn off Christian conservatives and GOP activists who back a state party platform opposed to the lottery.
"I don't think it gains a politician any traction at all," said Bill Brooks, executive director of the North Carolina Family Policy Council.
Should Little win the primary, Easley's longtime and well-publicized support for a lottery could negate any advantage Little gets from the position within his party. However, Munger said, Little could spin Easley's failure to get a lottery passed by the Legislature as evidence that he is ineffective.
Munger predicts candidates will have to keep developing positions on the lottery until the idea is settled by voters or the Legislature.
"It's the one issue we keep going back to," he said.
Nobody has commented on this story yet.