South Carolina is readying to enact a ban on such machines July 1, and Augusta officials are preparing for an influx into the Garden City that they expect will result. Unless there's one up a sleeve to salvage the lucrative industry, it is scheduled to fold at midnight Friday. Machines that are not unplugged then will be illegal. Owners have a week to get them out of the state - along with any spare parts. After that, they'll be contraband.
Critics say it also ruined the gateways to neighborhoods and took food from children's mouths.
David Beasley, the Republican governor who likened video poker to crack cocaine, lost his bid for a second term to a Democrat in a state that hadn't elected one to that office since 1978. Larry Huff of the Legacy Alliance, formed to oppose the poker industry, also was skeptical. Video poker became legal in a state that had never tolerated open gambling before when Sen. Jack Lindsay, D-Marlboro, slipped a provision into the hefty budget bill in 1985 and misled the few colleagues who asked what it meant. Increasingly, strips like Martintown Road became rows of poker parlors. In 1999, despite that claim and with the potential ban looming in 2000, something happened to prove there must still be big money in the industry.