The watchdog group Democracy North Carolina offered a reminder Friday of just why North Carolina got rid of video poker.
Research Director Bob Hall warns of a "pandora's box of mischief and miscreants" if Judge Howard Manning's order from Thursday overturning the state's ban on the electronic gambling machines is upheld: "Video-poker," Hall wrote, "has rightly been labeled the 'crack cocaine' of gambling."
Hall's group was ringing the alarm bell about video poker and its influences on N.C. politics years before former state Transportation Secretary Garland Garrett or former House Speaker Jim Black went to prison on federal corruption charges. Garrett was convicted of running an illegal gambling operation involving video poker, and the federal investigation that brought down Black started with video poker.
Hall and his group helped drive the 2006 State Board of Elections investigation into video poker contributions to Black, which totaled about $200,000 between 2000 and 2004, Hall reminded reporters in a memo Friday. Video poker money made up more than a third of the $30,000 that Black paid to then-Rep. Michael Decker in 2003 to switch parties and vote to keep Black in the speaker's chair.
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