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[Page: H9958]  GPO's PDF
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   (Mr. WOLF asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks and include extraneous material.)

   Mr. WOLF. Mr. Speaker, I want to call to the attention of my colleagues today's headlines: Alabama Rejects the Plan for a Lottery, AP. Fifty-four percent of the voters in Alabama rejected a State-sponsored lottery yesterday. The Crimson Tide has rejected a lottery in their State, and perhaps this is a shift that will change the tide of gambling in America.

   According to news reports, the tide is expected to wash over South Carolina, where a referendum to ban video poker is expected to also pass.

   I want to congratulate the people of Alabama for standing up and voting against State-sponsored gambling, and I hope others around the country will take note of what has occurred at the ballot box.

   Mr. Speaker, I would like to, at this point, submit this material for the record.

   MONTGOMERY, AL. (AP)--Gov. Don Siegelman, who lobbied long and hard for a state lottery to help fund education, watched the measure collapse in defeat at the hands of voters unwilling to cross their ministers.

   With 98 percent of precincts reporting, 663,988 people, or 54 percent, opposed the lottery referendum Tuesday, and 559,377 people, or 46 percent, supported it. Turnout was estimated at 50 percent.

   The proposal--a constitutional amendment to allow gambling--had once enjoyed a 20-point lead in the polls but came under increasing fire from church groups who said it would exploit the poor.

   Other opponents also claimed that a recent traffic ticket-fixing scandal showed that the Democratic governor's administration could not be trusted to oversee gambling in the state.

   Alabama joins Arkansas, Oklahoma and North Dakota as states that have rejected lotteries at the ballot box. Thirty-seven states and the District of Columbia have approved them.

   The loss was a stinging blow to Siegelman, who had made the referendum's passage a cornerstone of his 1998 election victory over Republican Fob James.

   ``In my inaugural address, I said that we would dare mighty things. I said that we would try new things and if they didn't work we would try something else,'' Siegelman said after the votes were counted.

   He said the results ``only serve to motivate me and to energize me in our fight and our quest to change education in this state forever.''

   Along with the lottery proposal, two other proposed constitutional amendments were on the ballot, and voters in Birmingham and Montgomery chose candidates for mayor and city council members.

   In Birmingham, Alabama's largest city, interim Mayor William Bell led a 14-way race for the mayorship but was forced into a Nov. 2 runoff against City Councilman Bernard Kincaid.

   In Montgomery, conservative Mayor Emory Folmar led six opponents in his bid for a seventh term but was forced into a runoff against Bobby Bright, a lawyer backed by organized labor.

   Siegelman had promised that the lottery would generate at least $150 million annually to fund college scholarships, a pre-kindergarten program and computer technology in schools.

[Page: H9959]  GPO's PDF

   ``He has put everything on this,'' said Auburn University at Montgomery political analyst Brad Moody. ``He has made it the centerpiece of his campaign and the centerpiece of his first year in office. He has thrown all his political capital away.''

   Sheila Bird was among those who voted against the lottery even though her 2-year-old daughter Amanda could have one day benefited from the plan.

   ``I just feel like it's morally wrong. I feel like it's going to cause problems in lower income families,'' she said. ``I think you can get money other ways.''

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