Gambling foe plans to organize campaign

By Walter Wright
Advertiser Staff Writer

Tom Grey, a retired Methodist minister known as America's foremost crusader against gambling, flew in from Illinois New Year's Day for a two-week organizing blitz to fight the effort to bring legal gambling to the state.

The executive director of the National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling sees a threat in Hawai'i this year: He believes that the 2002 Legislature could allow a referendum on gambling in an election that pro-gambling forces could win through an expensive advertising campaign.

The impact of legalized gambling could be devastating, says Grey.

"People who come to Hawai'i see this as a paradise found which they can explore, and when they go home they tell their friends about it," Grey said. "Why bring in something that will take these same people and trap them inside a casino where they can gamble and be losers and go home and tell friends about a paradise lost?"

Finally, Grey said, if Hawai'i allows gambling run by people from outside the state, it will lose the chance to plan its own future and its own remedies for the economic problems that gambling will only make worse.

Early this year Gov. Ben Cayetano abandoned his long-standing opposition to gambling in Hawai'i and said he would support a licensing arrangement that allows a single casino to operate. Recently, he said he would support legalizing gambling on interisland cruise ships.

That has Grey and the Hawai'i Coalition Against Gambling worried. Another worry is legislative leaders' suggestions that the gambling issue should be disposed of early in the upcoming session, which opens Jan. 16.

Both signs suggest gambling forces may already have the votes, he said.

Grey spoke yesterday to leaders of the United Church of Christ's Hawai'i Conference at their headquarters in Nu'uanu.

Carolyn Winston, director of the Women's Board of Missions, had a typical reaction: "The question we heard after Rev. Grey spoke is, 'What can we do?' "

The answer, she said, is "we must mobilize and let our state Legislature know that the citizens of Hawai'i by and large do not want gambling in our state."

The Coalition for Economic Diversity, one of the pro-gambling organizations, couldn't be reached for comment yesterday.

Reach Walter Wright at wwright@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8054.