Casino: ‘A moral issue’?

HOULTON – Critics of casino gambling in Maine took their message to the pulpit Monday, the first day of a monthlong tour of churches and a moral crusade against two November referendums they say are “steeped in deceit.”

“Everybody in Maine has that Sunday school voice in the back of their mind saying what’s right and what’s wrong,” Michael Heath, the Christian Civic League of Maine executive director, told those who showed up at the Military Street Baptist Church in Houlton on Monday.

“We’re here to remind people of that voice and affirm it,” he said in attacking the proposed Indian casino and the introduction of slot machines at the state’s harness racing tracks.

To date, the war over casino gambling has been waged on economic and social fronts, with both sides going out of their way to avoid a moral confrontation over the two November referendum questions. Question 2 will ask voters whether they want to allow slot machines at harness racing facilities. Question 3 will ask voters whether to allow the Penobscot Nation and Passamaquoddy Tribe to open a $650 million casino in southern Maine if part of the revenue goes to the state.

Monday afternoon’s stop in Houlton was the third of the day in Aroostook County for Heath, whose tour will take him to churches in Calais, Machias and Ellsworth today, before Wednesday’s scheduled stop in Sanford, a struggling industrial town and the proposed site of the casino resort.

With less than a month before the Nov. 4 vote, both sides are focusing attention on economically struggling northern Maine, where support for the casino is strongest and promises of 10,000 jobs have resonated loudest. That seemed to hold true Monday in downtown Houlton, where pro-casino signs dotted local intersections unchallenged by those from anti-casino forces.

But inside Military Street Baptist Church, local attorney Dick Rhoda told Health he meant to remedy that visible imbalance, a common one in much of northern Maine.

“My mind is made up. I’ve been against it from Day One,” Rhoda said carrying out two anti-casino signs, among the few Heath had left after his earlier stops in Caribou and Presque Isle.

Rhoda, due back in court, didn’t stay for Heath’s presentation, which was part sermon, part fund-raiser preceded by a video featuring Heath and former Gov. Angus King, one of the project’s opponents. The 13-minute video, in which pastoral scenes of lighthouses and moose are interrupted by thunderclaps and flashing, blurred images of poker tables and roulette wheels, had church member Kim Vail shaking her head in dismay despite some substantial economic predictions by casino supporters.

“They say 10,000 jobs, and they say $100 million for the state,” Vail said after Heath’s talk, during which he asked those in attendance to help him pray for $15,000 to buy 10,000 lawn signs in the last month of the campaign, “but this is a moral issue, and it’s a dangerous one for the people of Maine.”

Erin Lehane, spokeswoman for the pro-casino political action committee Think About It, said in a Monday telephone interview that she would continue to focus on the economic benefits the casino would bring to the state, adding that it wouldn’t be respectful to try to change someone’s moral aversion to gambling.

“If people are morally opposed, that’s their prerogative, but they’re in the minority,” said Lehane, citing national polls showing only 15 percent of respondents were morally opposed to casino gambling. “Not that that should diminish their position on it. I just don’t think the moral issue is a debatable one.”

Even Gov. John Baldacci, arguably the most influential critic of the casino, has steered clear of the moral debate.

“I don’t get on a soapbox and tell people what to do,” Baldacci said in an earlier interview with the Bangor Daily News.

But pundits say that opponents on moral grounds, if pushed to vote, could help defeat the casino plan, which has seen its lead in the polls shrink to single digits in the past month, marked by a plethora of television advertising from both sides.

“A lot of what this campaign is about is getting people to see the debate on certain terms,” said Douglas Hodgkin, emeritus professor of political science at Bates College. “If enough people see it as a moral issue, that could make a difference in a hotly contested campaign.”

The remaining dates and times of Heath’s “Think Again” tour are available at the Christian Civic League of Maine’s Web site, www.cclmaine.org.