Campaign lessons on gambling and family

Before you go to the polls it’s always good to glean as many facts as you can about the issues and the candidates. Here are some recent gleanings that provide some universal electoral lessons.

Kentucky voters who Tuesday will decide the governor’s race between Republican Ernie Fletcher and Democrat Steve Beshear know that the big issue here is the future of gambling in the Bluegrass.

Challenger Beshear wants to pay for lots of new programs by legalizing casino gambling to go with Kentucky’s love of horse racing. He claims the gaming tables will bring in $500 million in new tax revenue per year.

Incumbent Fletcher says gambling is for losers and counting on Beshear’s numbers is a bad bet.

So Kentuckians might want to take note of what’s going on in neighboring West Virginia, where table games were added to slots at the racetracks two weeks ago. Far from diluting the pot, the new games seem to be raking in ever larger piles of cash. Mountaineer Race Track & Gaming Resort showed a 13.6 percent increase in play at the slots since Oct. 19, when it opened up 37 poker tables. Poker play jumped 46 percent from the first week to the second week. The supply of suckers – um, bettors – seems inexhaustible.

Then there is politics as a blood sport; the mayor’s race in tiny Montezuma, OH, (138 registered voters), is between incumbent Charlotte Garman and her younger brother, Daniel Huffman.

He says she has done a great job, but his friends urged him to run and he just couldn’t say no.

She said he’s highly qualified, although he knows nothing about the town’s issues and she has never known him to attend a council meeting.

Hey, lots of towns this size have trouble finding one candidate to run for office.