My position on casino gambling is clear: It is at its moral best when it sucks money from Texas. Because of that belief, I was experiencing a spiritual high as I walked through the parking lot of the L’Auberge du Lac Casino Resort in Lake Charles this weekend. Practically every license plate I saw was from west of the Sabine River. (Some estimates have that the average number of Texas visits there at about 80 percent.)
I was in Lake Charles for Rouge et Blanc, a growing-in- popularity annual wine and food event, and not to gamble (well, maybe a little video poker). Walking through the resort reminded me of the poker game Louisiana’s border towns play with Texas. As long as casino gambling remains illegal in the big state, Texans will cross the border for wagering in Louisiana. A cousin who lives in Lake Charles and who is astute in politics explained that if ever gambling would be put to a statewide vote in Texas, it would pass in Houston but be defeated in the hill country where voting patterns are more conservative. I guess we should be a little worried that there are more people living in Houston than in the hill country, but Louisiana also holds another ace, and that is the tendency for Texans to elect Republican governors whose constituents generally disapprove of gambling. From a purely selfish Louisiana-centric perspective, we should root for the GOP across the border.
Back in the ‘80s when casinos were being debated in this state, conventional wisdom had it that South Louisiana, with its laissez-faire Catholic Cajun culture, would support gambling, but Baptist-influenced North Louisiana would not. Who would have thought that Shreveport would develop a thriving gambling scene but there would be no casinos in Lafayette? The games are successful in Shreveport for the same reason they are in Lake Charles: proximity to the border. As though blessed by some sort of guiding hand, Shreveport and Lake Charles are positioned so that each is connected by an interstate to one of Texas’ largest cities, Dallas and Houston respectively.
It would be wrong to conclude that Texans are victims of Louisiana’s free spirit. Economically and culturally, western Louisiana is linked to Texas. Rice from the Louisiana fields, for example, is trucked to Houston to be packaged and marketed there. Both Houston and Dallas are economic hubs for which Lake Charles, Shreveport and points in between are parts of their axis. Because Texas makes so much money off of Louisiana, there is some justification for Texans spending their leisure dollars in the Bayou State where, in addition to the games, the food and the music are spicier. Meanwhile, a message to the people of the hill country: Be sure to vote in every election.
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