There's too much money involved.
I mean, really. Why should Maryland be some prissy oasis from this sleazy form of recreation?
You've heard the arguments: Delaware does it. West Virginia does it, and hot-damn, ma'am, we can't let ourselves fall behind those fine, progressive states. (Last week, Education Week ranked each state for K-12 achievement in public education. Maryland got a B and ranked third nationally. West Virginia got an F; its eighth-graders are 47th in math and 43rd in reading. Delaware got a C-minus. )
While I'm not surprised that a majority of Maryland voters now approve of slots, I'm a little surprised that only 32 percent of us think some of the revenue derived from gambling should prop up the state's racing industry.
That has been central to the argument all along - that, without slots, purses of thoroughbred races will continue to fall, and good horses and trainers and owners will follow the money elsewhere (to states with slots) and crops will fail, and broodmares will die, and farm hands will be forced to stop painting all that white board fence out there, and Maryland just won't be as pretty, and the farms will be sold to developers and they'll build McMansions where Native Dancer used to stand at stud, and pretty soon there won't be any Maryland horses at all, and Maryland racing will be reduced to one day just for the Preakness, and it will be held at Laurel, and Pimlico will become a paintball course.
That's the kind of thing we've been hearing for years.
But, apparently, Marylanders aren't convinced. Or they don't care.
There's a whole generation - or two - of Marylanders who've grown up without horse breeding and racing in their consciousness; they have little in the way of nostalgic affection for it. They certainly don't patronize the tracks, and most of them probably only think about the sport one day per year.
Plus, a lot of Marylanders work in an economy that's constantly shifting and downsizing; they don't see anyone suggesting that state-sanctioned gambling be used to subsidize the industry in which they're employed. And, no doubt, there's a strong social class aspect to this - the thoroughbred industry may employ a lot of blue-collar workers, but it's generally perceived as a hobby of the well-to-do.
Even those of us who've given up this fight still see slots as an indirect tax on the poor. So we're going to get the poor to gamble on slots to prop up the horse industry.
Sorry. That last sentence sounded like the start of an argument. But it's too late for that. Plus, I'm out of space.
dan.rodricks@baltsun.com
