NEW: History of Parimutal

At-A-Glance

The Texas legislature authorized the licensing of horse and dog racing tracks in 1987, after a long fight won primarily by the gambling industry's argument that the tracks would annually inject the economy with $99.2 million in new revenue. That revenue never materialized, peaking at $5 million. Five horse racing and three dog racing tracks currently operate in Texas.

The racing industry has turned to taxpayers several times since then for bail-outs and loan forgiveness. Most recently it began lobbying for legalization of Video Slot Machines (VLTs) at the tracks, arguing again that slots at the tracks would provide significant tax revenue to the state. They do not emphasize that failing race tracks would become major slot machine casinos, also called "Racinos," overnight.

In return, the state, particularly the counties that host the tracks, will acquire a gambling virus that is unmatched in its harmful consequences.

Video Slot Machines are known as the 'crack cocaine' of gambling because of their addictive nature. Because of speed of play and ready accessibility, users tend to become addicted more quickly and lose more money more quickly. In fact, Big Gambling pays psychologists to assist game designers to make these machines more addictive, juicing up hypnotic sounds and sights and apparent near-misses to make users believe that skill is somehow involved in winning. In 2002, the Rhode Island Gambling Treatment Program identified video slots as "the most addictive form of gambling in history."

The National Gambling Impact Study Commission has recommended specifically against adding slots or VLTs to race tracks because of their many economic and social negative impacts. Other down-sides of video slot machines:

• The addiction cycle is shorter - about 1 year to become addicted
• Some 80% of casino revenue is generated by slot machines
• Up to half of all revenue generated by slot machines is from compulsive gamblers
• Women and youth are particularly vulnerable to the addictive qualities of slot machines
• Legalization of slots at the tracks would legitimize casino gambling games in Texas resulting in the proliferation of Native American reservation gambling and sparking renewed efforts to build major casinos in all the major cities and tourist areas of Texas.

No Horsing Around: A History of the Baptist Fight Against Pari-mutuel Gambling in Texas, 1905-1997

By Weston Ware 

The author, Weston Ware, is associate director of the Texas Baptist Christian Life Commission, the agency of the Baptist General Convention of Texas which deals with public policy, social and moral issues.   He served in that role in 1964-66 and from 1982 to the present (1999). During the years from 1982, he had the major responsibility for Baptist opposition to gambling and in the lobbyist role testified for or against every significant piece of gambling legislation introduced during those years. This paper was written for oral presentation and is more or less as delivered to the Texas Baptist Historical Society, March 6, 1997, in Austin Texas.

            Prior to the 20th century, all gambling was outlawed in Texas and Baptists must have been happy about that. But if we read the horse people correctly, only two years after the Republic of Texas was founded, the Houston Jockey Club was formed, with racing advertised beginning November 16, 1838.[1]

             In the early 1900s, elaborate fairs in cities like Dallas were centers for horse racing and efforts were made to exempt horse races from Texas gambling laws. In spite of strong reactions from Texas preachers, pressures from the fairs and chambers of commerce resulted in legislation in 1905 which exempted horse races within the track enclosures. Baptists such as J. B. Gambrell, J. Frank Norris and George W. Truett opposed what was seen as the dishonesty of gambling. Gambrell said that [gambling] is not at all different from stealing, though the dishonesty of it is disguised by a show of fair play. He said that the betting bill “...stripped of all disguise is a proposition to sacrifice moral manhood...(for) race horse(s)...   “It is better,” he said, “to have fine men and good work horses than to have race horses and scrub men.”[2]

            The legislature did not agree with the preachers and in 1905 it legalized race track gambling in Texas.

            By December, 1908, the Texas preachers had organized to repeal gambling. The Dallas pastors sent out a statement [4] W. D. Bradfield, a Methodist who was later to be Professor of Theology at Southern Methodist University, addressed the meeting, and his speech was distributed to readers across the state via the pages of the Baptist Standard. [5] Frank Norris, the Standard editor and others were taking heat for their involvement in political issues.   In typical front-page fashion, Norris responded in the Standard  with an editorial defending the right of preachers to influence the political process. [6]   Norris himself traveled to Austin to testify before the legislature.[7] The Dallas Chamber of Commerce called for a meeting of both proponents and opponents of gambling, because, in its opinion, the very life of the State Fair was at stake. Bradfield and Norris were invited, but Norris reported in the Standard that they were threatened, shrieked at, hissed, and otherwise greatly denounced.[8]

            The State Legislature had recently made an excursion to Galveston to allow that city to make its case as to up-coming legislation. Dallas citizens decided to invite the Legislature to experience Dallas first hand so they would be sympathetic to Dallas concerns, one of them, at least, being the issue of permitting gambling at the Dallas Fair. After some wrangling between the two legislative houses, the last weekend in February was selected for a social and legislative visit to Dallas.

            Dr. George W. Truett was the popular young pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas. Dr. Truett's son-in-law (in the authorized biography) wrote about the visit that some of the legislators made to hear Dr. Truett speak the Sunday morning of February 28, 1909.[9] 

            Dr. Truett was notified of their coming and prepared a sermon that never mentioned horse-racing or gambling. His sermon was based on the story of the wild man of Gadara. The Gadarenes were shown to be a sorry lot of materialists who put property rights above human rights. Truett showed them as men who would rather have their hogs safe than have their citizens freed of evil spirits. They would rather have hogs in their midst than the Son of God. [10] The chief sponsor of the gambling bill was overheard to say, as they left the church that day: "Whoever proposed bringing this crowd of law-makers to hear this preacher today sure played Hell. My racing bill is dead as a salt herring right now." [11]

            The Truett message is a valuable watershed of understanding of the Baptist opposition to gambling. The Baptist view, as stated by Truett, is that “back of every attempt to sacrifice men for money is the Gadarene spirit.[12]

            Shortly after the February 28 sermon, Truett, leaving Dallas on a trip, said that his hope was “that the present legislature will utterly eliminate every form of gambling from our fair State. All civilization, all government, all society, should be ordered so as to make it as easy as possible for people to do right. It is wrong, therefore, for an individual, or corporation, or law making body to make it hard for people to do right.” [13]

            So it was that race track gambling was repealed for the first time after a short run from 1905 to 1909.

            But Texas horse racers did not give up. Pari-mutuel, invented by the French in 1870, was begun in Kentucky in 1908 at the exact time that the old forms of book-making and pool selling were resulting in such betting being thrown out of Texas. The McKamy bill in 1913 was a pari-mutuel bill, as was the Paulus bill in 1917, the Avis bill in 1929 and even the Pope bill in 1931 (even though it did not mention pari-mutuel by name). In 1933, W. D. Bradfield, now a professor at Southern Methodist University wrote an extensive article in the Baptist Standard analyzing HB103 by Representative Duvall. Bradfield saw the Duvall bill of 1933 as just another attempt to say that the new pari-mutuel system eliminated all the old evils of the race track, the book-makers, the touts, the bribing of jockeys and the doctoring of horses. Not only would the bill legalize horse race betting throughout the state and engraft the scheme of race track gambling on the educational system of Texas, but it also “would bring into contempt the whole administration of the gambling laws in other places in the state.” [14] He pointed out that it did just that from 1905 to 1909 when betting on horse racing was legalized on the day and within the enclosure where such races were run.

            Bradfield’s view of the future of gambling laws can be seen as prophetic since many who participated in the struggle against legalization believe that it was the passage of legislation in 1979 calling for the 1980 referendum on bingo which resulted in a gradual deterioration of public support for laws against gambling. Bingo was seen as a minor vice by the general public, but its passage resulted in increased pressures by gambling promoters for more exciting forms of gambling. If gambling was legal in bingo halls, why couldn’t it be done elsewhere?

            Pari-mutuel gambling itself was legalized for the first time in 1933 when Texas was one of nine states that established legal betting on horses.   Governor James V. Allred, in his Message to the First Called Special Session in 1937, called it a surreptitious passage.

“During the closing hours of the Forty-third Legislature, after the same proposal had been beaten on the Floor of the House of Representatives, without the matter having been made an issue in any legislative or gubernatorial campaign, a rider was tied on to the general appropriation bill setting up a Texas Racing Commission and legalizing race track gambling.” [15]

Legislators would have had to vote down the entire appropriations bill if they wanted to stop the legalization of race track gambling. The “tricky” way pari-mutuel was attached to a rider which had to be passed was indicative of the approaches which would be taken in attempts to pass pari-mutuel and other forms of gambling in future years.

            Governor Allred was a churchman and a moralist and fought pari-mutuel from the day he entered office. His supporters had published a full page ad for him in the Baptist Standard  when Baptist Pat M. Neff, who had served as Assistant Attorney General under Allred, joined with other Baptist friends in a paid political statement urging his election. [16] After his election, pari-mutuel forces managed to keep his repeal bills from the floor, but he continued his battle until the calling of a special session specifically to repeal race track gambling in the summer of 1937. According to Temple attorney Jim Bowmer, after the repeal was passed in the House, it was stymied in the Senate at fifteen to fifteen.   Gov. Allred called on Bowmer’s father, Dewitt Bowmer, a longtime friend and confidant of the governor to help him produce the final vote. Senator Dr. Billy Newton was nowhere to be found and apparently wanted to avoid the vote on pari-mutuel. He was, however, a close friend of Dewitt Bowmer and at Bowmer’s request he appeared to cast his vote which passed the Governor’s repeal of pari-mutuel gambling in the first special session of 1937.[17]

            In 1939 a revival of pari-mutuel appeared to pass sixty three to sixty two, but on verification the vote failed fifty five to seventy five.

            Bills were introduced again in 1943, 1947 and 1953 but all died in committee. In 1959 an attempt was made to amend the Constitution to permit pari-mutuel. The 1960s produced the efforts of San Antonio Representative and later Senator “Red” Berry who remains famous for his suggestion that Texas be divided into two states, north and south, so the southern half could have its fun enjoying horse racing, gambling and drinking, while the northern half had its fun being outraged over what the southern half was doing.[18]    Berry’s efforts in 1961, 1963, 1965, 1967 and 1969, Berry’s last year in the legislature, all failed. [19]

            The statewide organization in opposition to gambling during the 1960’s was called Texans Against Race Track Gambling.   Co-chairmen E. B. Germany and Dr. W. R. White ran a full page ad in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, April 10, 1962, in opposition to the referendum. Arthur A. Smith, vice president and economist of the First National Bank of Dallas, was a prominent leader of the anti-gambling forces and was often called upon for testimony in Austin. 

            There was disagreement as to whether pari-mutuel gambling could be passed by the legislature without a statewide referendum. The view that a referendum was necessary, while apparently without legal merit, was so strong that when pari-mutuel was finally passed in special session in the summer of 1986, it was passed pending the results of a statewide vote of the people in November 1987.   This view that a referendum would be required resulted in a long series of referenda beginning in 1962 and lasting until passage of the pari-mutuel referendum in 1987.[20]

            Broad support from all levels of Texas life was typical of the referenda in 1962 and 1968. The day of the Democratic election primary May 4, 1962, Texans Against Race Track Gambling ran an article pointing out that the presidents of 28 colleges in all sections of Texas condemned pari-mutuel betting and that 41 legal reserve life insurance companies had adopted a resolution in opposition. The Democratic State Committee was opposed, as was the president of Texas Police Chiefs Association, the mayors of Houston and Dallas, the District Attorney, sheriff and ten police chiefs of Dallas County, the Methodist bishops and Episcopal bishops, plus Presbyterians, Baptists, Disciples of Christ, and interest groups of almost every denomination. To top it off, thoughtful editors of newspapers throughout the state had condemned pari-mutuel betting in editorial columns.

            In March of 1968, the Anti-Crime Council of Texas was organized to fight the 1968 Democratic primary referendum.   Former Attorney General Will Wilson and Baylor University President Abner McCall were named co-chairmen. Baylor President McCall, who led anti-gambling forces throughout the 70s and 80s, told opponents on various occasions that “W. R. White (former President of Baylor) had said that fighting gambling was in the Baylor president’s job description.”[21] The opponents came with a group of one hundred leading churchmen, educators, business leaders and athletes.    “The council is devoted to fighting crime and set as its first goal the defeat of a May 4 referendum on pari-mutuel betting.” [22]    1968 was the first campaign for attorney Phil Strickland who was employed by the Texas Christian Life Commission in 1967 to deal with the pari-mutuel issue in Austin. Strickland has been a major player in every pari-mutuel issue since 1967.[23]

            Prior to 1987, there were five non-binding referenda. In 1962 gambling was disapproved by Democratic votes 632,458 to 513,703 (52 to 48 percent). In 1968 Democrats disapproved 53.5 to 46.5 and Republicans 52 to 48 percent. In 1974 Democrats disapproved 52 to 48 and Republicans 55 to 45 percent. In 1978 Republicans voted 51.6 to 48.4 in opposition. The Democratic tally was marred by “confusion and controversy,” but the final tally opposed pari-mutuel 51 to 49 percent. In 1982, there was no Democratic vote, but the Republican primary gave pari-mutuel supporters their first statewide victory 52 to 48 percent.[24]

            New personalities emerged in the battle over pari-mutuel in 1971. Rep. Matt Garcia and Sen. Jim Bates passed resolutions for an interim study committee to examine the pari-mutuel system of horse racing and its potential effects on Texas. Sen. O. H. “Ike” Harris chaired the committee which was stacked with proponents of pari-mutuel gambling. Bills that year would have set up a commission to regulate public horse racing in Texas but would not have legalized pari-mutuel gambling. In 1972 pari-mutuel gambling was the subject of study by an interim study committee which elicited some of the strongest Baptist opposition to pari-mutuel. In 1973 a bill by Tati Santiesteban would have legalized pari-mutuel betting on both horse and dog racing. It never got a hearing. In 1975 a bill was heard in the Senate but failed to get out of State Affairs. Efforts also failed in 1977.[25]

            By 1981, the Texas Horse Racing Association had come a long way from the days when “Red” Berry was reported to have “given the bird” to the preachers. They hired R. E. “Bob” Johnson to serve as their lobbyist and had the increasing influence of Ike Harris in the Senate. Johnson was formerly a House Parliamentarian and later had the same role in the Senate. He raised pari-mutuel lobbying to a new level.   According to the 1983 Report by the House Study Group, the 1981 vote on HB915 was the first pari-mutuel bill to reach the floor of the House and receive a vote since 1939 (except for the vote on a constitutional amendment resolution in 1969). “The record vote provided Texas Horse Racing Association (THRA), in Bob Johnson’s words, with a ‘Christmas list’” on which the organization could base its future political efforts.” [26]

            In 1983 the pari-mutuel bill was held in the House State Affairs Committee for seven weeks as Rep. Al Edwards was the swing vote on sending the bill to the floor.  Baptists worked closely with House leader Frank Tejeda (later to be State Senator and then Congressman from San Antonio). Tejeda led the floor fight where it was debated for several hours before it was defeated. The first vote on the Tejeda motion to table came back defeated by seventy four to seventy two and it appeared that pari-mutuel opponents had lost. On recount, however, the bill was tabled and killed by a seventy five to seventy three vote. The vote change was a result of several legislators who complained that their voting buttons had not worked properly and at least one legislator was hustled out of hiding to make his vote. While 1983 was a victory for gambling opponents, it was only a matter of time until several factors would work together for the passage of pari-mutuel betting in 1986 with a bill calling for a statewide referendum on pari-mutuel in 1987.

            On March 6,1985 conflict between the minority caucus which had apparently supported the pari-mutuel bill and pari-mutuel lobbyists who determined the content of the bill when it got to the House floor caused a real debacle for pari-mutuel supporters when the vote for engrossment in the House lost by a vote of 52 to 96 finally killing pari-mutuel for the rest of the session.    Baptist satisfaction from victories in 1983 and 1985, however, was short-lived as gambling promoters were able to take advantage of the downturn in the Texas economy and continue their media campaign to convince the state that pari-mutuel was the only thing that could save the state from an income tax in the next legislative session. State budget constraints, the promise of major economic development and pressure of special sessions guided by House and Senate leadership who favored pari-mutuel resulted in the passage of pari-mutuel in the summer of 1986. 

            In summary, the following factors were important reasons for the passage of pari-mutuel in 1986:

                        (1) A major blow had been dealt to anti-gambling opponents in 1981 when bingo had been passed by an alliance of Roman Catholic groups, charities and veteran groups who wanted to allow “charitable bingo.”

                        (2) The population of Texas was becoming increasingly pluralistic breaking down the consensus against gambling. This was due to both increased immigration from Mexico and from northern states where some forms of gambling were already permitted.

                        (3) The Texas economy was hurting both on the farm and in the oil patch and fear of a state income tax was rampant among politicians and popular among pari-mutuel lobbyists..

                       (4)   The public relations campaign by pari-mutuel proponents on the vast economic development that would come with pari-mutuel racing was effective. For example, not only were major CPA firms hired to do “dream” studies promoting gambling, [27]but Commissioner of Agriculture Jim Hightower produced an extensive study touting the agricultural benefits which would come from pari-mutuel.[28] Such promotion, together with the claim for tax revenues to the state ( estimates ranged from eighty to two hundred million dollars annually), were myths that were widely accepted by Texas media and general public.

                        (5) Texans, because of bingo, had a gradually increasing comfort level with the idea of the legality of various kinds of gambling.

                        (6) The fact that pari-mutuel was one of the top legislative issues in every regular session during the eighties and calling of 30 day special sessions in 1985 and 1986 made it increasingly difficult for opponents of gambling to rouse the people back home. The grass roots were called upon so many times that they finally got tired and legislators were convinced that they could pass pari-mutuel without serious repercussions from the home district.

            Whatever the case, pari-mutuel was on a fast track and Governor Mark White called Baptist offices in Dallas on September 24, 1986, to say that while he “opposed gambling,” he was going to let the bill become law without the veto that Baptists across the state had seen as their last hope to stop the advent of major gambling in Texas.[29]

            The 1987 referendum campaign was a major event with Baptists and opponents raising $450,000, and the proponents putting several million down to bet on the horses. Baptists who led the opponents, under the continued direction of Sue Cox, changed the name of their organization from the Anti-Crime Council of Texas to Texans Who Care. The effort touted Tom Landry against Bum Phillips, Roger Staubach, Grant Teaff, et. al. against Willie Nelson, Jimmy Dean and George Strait. Weston Ware, writing about Texans Who Care in the effort to secure the participaion of all relgious groups in the campaign, described of a coalition of business persons, politicians, law enforcement officials, animal lovers, religious leaders and ordinary citizens. We are, he said, “liberals, conservatives, Republicans, Democrats, high church and low church. Our common concern and care for Texas and our diversity make us strong.’ These were the forces being challenged to turn down the gambler’s invitation one more time.[30]

            A major political decision of the campaign was the decision to make animal cruelty a lead issue in the campaign. The decisions made by Texans Who Care Director Sue Cox and Christian Life Commission staff Phil Strickland and Weston Ware were based on professional polling which showed that significant numbers of neutral voters could be won based on the issue of animal cruelty. Texans Who Care proclaimed that “As many as 100,000 small animals such as rabbits and kittens are killed each year when they are caught and eaten by greyhounds in training.” [31]   “Mammas, don’t let your puppies grow up to be greyhounds” was also part of the message because of the way the dogs are often “put away” after they are no longer good runners.

            From at least the 1960s, a change had developed in the approach of Baptists to the gambling issue. As opposed to dealing with it directly as a moral issue of right and wrong--making it a “preacher” issue, if you will, the opposition focused its attack on public policy results of gambling.. Gambling was wrong because it hurt people, but most emphasis was placed on the public policy issues involved:   (1) It would bring crime into the community and corruption into the political system. (2) It would cause addiction and human suffering. (3) It would take food out of the mouths of children and families. (4) And, in addition to these arguments against gambling, the 1986-87 campaign attacked pari-mutuel for animal cruelty under the campaign banner “Texans Who Care.”[32]

            The enduring question about the campaign is whether emphasis on the animal cruelty issue, while gaining significant non-committed votes, failed to arouse the church people of the state on the morality of gambling. Efforts to defeat gambling had been successful in the past as long as the leaders of the opposition could arouse the fire of the local preachers back home. In 1987, Baptists and the Texans Who Care coalition of opponents were not able to make that happen. The referenda was lost 57 to 43 percent, 1.22 million to 970,000. (Obviously, this was not an unbeatable margin in a state with two and a quarter million Baptists).

            Some might take comfort in the fact that all the things Baptists and other opponents have said from the beginning about pari-mutuel gambling at the tracks have been proved true. It has been a dying business in the United States since the 1970s. After ten years, it is still a moribund business in Texas. Baptists were right in 1983 when Alan Maley told the Senate: “If you pass this bill, you are just taking another mouth to feed.”[33] Pari-mutuel has failed to produce the promised revenues to the state. It has failed to be the motor for a great “horse industry” for Texas. Instead it has called for “handouts” in every legislative session since 1987.[34] The ink was not dry on the bill when Ike Harris admitted that the state’s tax share would have to be reduced from five to one percent of the takeout for the tracks to make it.[35] All major tracks have sought publicly supported financing for their construction. All have called for additional gambling (simulcasting, off-track betting, video poker or card rooms) as a means to subsidize the partnership of track owners and horse owners.[36] Its current, (1997) rumored embarrassment is that its still unpaid 1987-88 debt to the state for the establishment of the Racing Commission will be covered (perhaps appropriately) by lottery funds.

            Pari-mutuel has done so poorly after 10 years in Texas that one might feel some sympathy toward the industry, except for their role as the harbingers of worse things to come. Pari-mutuel’s most significant accomplishment in Texas to date has been the passage of the 1991 referendum to allow a state lottery in Texas. The lottery could not be passed until pari-mutuel’s supporters with their millions to wager on gambling in Texas had their day. In Texas today , we have a government which, to use Truett’s metaphor, has been captured by the Gadarene spirit. This means simply that it is no longer unthinkable for the state to operate a gambling business (lottery) which deliberately uses scam and subterfuge to make money for state revenues and makes most of that money off those who can least afford the loss.[37] The legislation of evil for money is the Gadarene spirit. “No man,” said Truett, “ [and] no corporation, no act of men, have the right, in any relation, to do that which makes it harder for other men to live.”[38]           

            The conclusion has to be that Baptists need the kind of preachers that we had in the 1900s and in the 1930s (men like both J. Frank Norris and George W. Truett) and that Methodists need leaders like W. D. Bradfield who was an ever present force in the anti-gambling movement from 1908 through the 1940s. 

            The Baptist Standard  editor commented in 1934 on the importance of preachers to be social reformers: 

“It is up to the preachers to stand as a seawall against this rising tide (of gambling). They are honored in having this responsibility. Merchants will not do it. They are timid and always have been as a class. Doctors are not reformers. They will not even speak out against social diseases when they know the terrible and far-reaching consequence of those diseases. It is up to the preachers to lead all reforms for individual and social betterment....The Baptist Standard is going to meet its responsibility in this regard.” [39]

            The question is “When will gambling in Texas take the third strike?” Probably not until the preachers of Texas have the courage to stand against the Gadarene spirit.

It may be argued that the Standard editor’s claim that merchants, doctors and other professionals will not arise to the challenge of social reform in the face of the gambling menace facing Texas is an overstatement and that they, like preachers, can be challenged to stand against the Gadarene spirit, but it is my experience, having worked as an opponent of gambling in Texas at the most intense levels since 1982, that unless there is a moral challenge from a prophetic ministry as to the genuine hurt and harm done to society by gambling, we will likely continue to see public policy on gambling that gives more honor to hogs than to men.

Friday, Jul 18, 2008
Lone Star Park parent firm pushes off-track, online wagering
By JOHN MORITZ
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
jmoritz@star-telegram.com

AUSTIN - After five years of placing losing bets on legislation that would allow video slot machines at Texas racetracks, the racing industry is upping the ante. The parent company of Lone Star Park at Grand Prairie is circulating a proposal that would make off-track betting and Internet wagering on races across the country legal in Texas. Insiders say it's an uphill fight, but the company says Texas is losing tens of millions of dollars to the 20 other states that have legalized such wagering. Full story at

http://www.star-telegram.com/804/story/756601.html