Don Beason's gambling lobbying

After former House Speaker Jim Black revealed he once accepted a half-million dollar loan from a video poker lobbyist in 2000, a sardonic joke made its way around the capital:

Jim Black asked Don Beason for a $500,000 loan. No problem, Beason replied, but it'll have to be in quarters.

The loan was no joke, however. The revelation effectively ended Beason's lobbying career, and state investigators are still looking into the circumstances of the loan and Beason's ties to video poker.

As a contract lobbyist, Beason had a wide variety of clients, but few as long-term as video poker. From 1993 to 2000, he represented the N.C. Amusement Machine Association, a video poker operators group. His son, Mark, also lobbied on its behalf from 1999 to 2002.

Beason lobbied for a wide variety of gambling interests, advocating for riverboat gambling in Wilmington, the creation of a state lottery as well as video poker. In 2001 and 2002, he also represented the Seneca-Cayuga Tribe, a Indian nation in Oklahoma that runs casinos.

After the jump, a look into state newspaper archives.

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As a lobbyist for the N.C. Amusement Machine Association in 1994, Beason argued that dockside and riverboat gambling on the Cape Fear River could help Southeastern North Carolina's economy.

"If it had gambling properly done, then Wilmington could be a major convention city on the East Coast," he said. (WS-N, Aug. 14, 1994)

In 1996, Beason said that he was hopeful that the legislature would create a lottery that year. He said state lawmakers' interest in a lottery was the highest it had been in five years.

"It's not just Democrats who are interested,” he said. "It's Republicans and Democrats." (WS-N, Dec. 2, 1996)

After a poll in 2000 showed that only a minority of North Carolinians opposed video poker, Beason said the results made sense.

"A majority of North Carolinians like to gamble a little bit themselves, just not to excess," Beason said.
"Lots of people sit around and play cards and have a good time doing it.

"One video card game machine in a convenience store — 99.9 percent of North Carolina citizens do not view that as a problem." (Char-O, Aug. 2, 2000)

After South Carolina outlawed the games in 2000, the North Carolina legislature passed a ban on new machines to keep operators from hauling them across the border. Beason said the law meant they were going to other states instead.

He also said the majority of video poker machines in the state are owned by small, family-run businesses that also supply arcade games. (N&O, July 29, 2001)

After a 2001 report by Democracy South showed that Gov. Mike Easley had received $124,000 from video poker interests, Beason argued that the money was overstated.

Paradoxically, he also argued that it was ineffective, since table games are still prohibited in North Carolina's Indian casinos, the lottery hadn't passed and new video poker machines had been banned.

"If money buys influence, it sure takes a lot more than they've reported here," he said.
(N&O, Sept. 25, 2001)