What the Gambling Debate Reveals About Power, Influence, and the Public Good
by Rev. Mark Creech
This editorial first appeared in the Greensboro News and Record.
You will find the link here: https://greensboro.com/opinion/column/article_a89b6d9d-859b-4b98-9122-bd1a98ffbfe5.html
Phil Berger might well be considered one of the finest legislative leaders North Carolina has ever known.
For years, he has provided steady, principled leadership in the State Senate. Under his watch, our state has seen meaningful reforms, stronger fiscal stewardship, and policies that have improved the quality of life for countless North Carolinians. Much could be said in his commendation, and it should be said. He has served this state with distinction.
Yet even good men are not immune to the distorting influence of bad industries.
The controversy surrounding casino expansion in 2023, which Berger championed, and the political fallout that followed, should give us pause – not because it proves corruption on Senator Berger’s part (it does not), but because it reveals something deeper:
The gambling industry has a corrosive effect on everything it touches.
This is not new in North Carolina.
When the state lottery was passed in 2005, it was promoted as a harmless way to fund education. But almost immediately, it became entangled in scandal. Then-House Speaker Jim Black was brought down amid a web of corruption that included ties to lottery and video-poker interests. A lottery commissioner failed to disclose substantial payments from a vendor seeking state business. Lobbyists and operatives were charged with illegal lobbying on behalf of those same interests.
That was only the beginning.
In the years since, gambling-related money has continued to flow through our political system in troubling ways, through bundled campaign contributions, undisclosed lobbying efforts, and ongoing investigations into whether industry interests have sought to purchase influence behind the scenes. Even when no laws are proven to be broken, the pattern is unmistakable: where gambling expands, it invites the kind of influence that clouds good judgment, obscures transparency, and undermines the public trust.
Why is this so?
Because gambling is an industry built on loss, on the steady transfer of wealth from the many to the few. It thrives not on the prosperity of communities, but on their vulnerability. To expand, it must persuade lawmakers, shape public opinion, and often operate where influence is hardest to see.
In such an environment, even honorable leaders can find themselves entangled in forces that subtly reshape decisions and blur lines that once seemed clear.
That is why the casino debate proved so politically damaging. It was not merely about economic development. It raised questions, fairly or unfairly, about transparency, influence, and whether powerful interests were operating behind closed doors.
And those questions were enough – enough to weaken and begin dismantling something good that had stood strong for many years.
Not because Senator Berger is corrupt, but because the issue itself carries the stain of past abuses that ultimately invites suspicion wherever it appears.
This is a lesson we cannot afford to miss.
The danger of gambling is not only what it does to individuals who become addicted, though that cost is seriously tragic. The danger is also what it ultimately does to undermine institutions, governance, and public confidence.
It has a way of clouding judgment.
It has a way of attracting the wrong kind of influence.
It has a way of diminishing the moral authority and reputations of well-meaning, good men.
North Carolina should take heed. Gambling is not harmless entertainment. It is not a benign enterprise, but one that has proven time and again to warrant serious ethical and civic concern.
We are told that gambling expansion is inevitable. We are told that it is modern and necessary for economic growth. But our own state’s history tells a different story – one marked not by clean progress, but by repeated scandal and troubling patterns of influence that have followed it wherever it has gone.
We would be wise to ask not only what gambling promises, but what it costs.
Because once it gains a foothold, its influence rarely remains contained.
As we have seen, even the strongest leaders are not untouched by its reach.
Rev. Mark Creech is Director of Government Relations for Return America and a Christian minister who writes on faith, culture, and public policy.
