An organizer of Tuesday’s anti-lottery “workshop” in Rowan County hopes at least a hundred people will show up to hear the message that North Carolina’s state government should resist the gambling temptation.
“If you can get that many of the grass-roots people involved, you can move mountains,” says the Rev. Coy Privette, a Cabarrus County commissioner, former legislator and president of the Christian Action League of North Carolina Inc.
The Rowan meeting, bringing together many anti-lottery messages, will be held at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Friendship Baptist Church, near Interstate 85 and Peach Orchard Road.
The Raleigh-based Christian Action League sponsors the workshop, the fourth so far in North Carolina. It is meant to attract citizens from Rowan, Davidson, Cabarrus and Stanly counties.
“The folks are going to be motivated to contact their legislators to tell them the last thing North Carolina should do is to get into the gambling business,” Privette says.
Other meetings already have been held in New Bern, Greensboro and Charlotte, with two more to come May 17 in Shelby and Asheville.
The league is working as a partner with several other groups that oppose a N.C. lottery for education, as promoted by Gov. Mike Easley and represented by bills in the N.C. Senate and House. The proposed legislation would allow voters to approve a state-sanctioned lottery on the November ballot.
The anti-lottery forces oppose both a lottery and a referendum for a lottery.
Other groups to be represented at Tuesday’s meeting include N.C. Citizens United Against the Lottery, the N.C. Family Policy Council, the Council on Christian Life of the Baptist State Convention and Western N.C. Citizens for a Sound Economy.
Sponsors of the program also include the Baptist Men of both Rowan County and North Carolina.
Program participants will include the testimony of a compulsive gambler.
Privette, of Kannapolis, is most intrigued by the people who have given their support to N.C. Citizens Against the Lottery.
That effort includes conservatives, liberals, Republicans and Democrats alike, Privette notes — from evangelist Billy Graham to former University of North Carolina President Bill Friday, from former Republican Gov. Jim Martin to former Democratic Gov. Bob Scott.
Dean Smith, former basketball coach of the University of North Carolina Tar Heels, also supports the anti-lottery effort.
“If you can’t win with that kind of coalition, you may as well pack your bags and move to Siberia,” Privette says.
N.C. Citizens Against the Lottery is using automated telephone calls in targeted areas across the state to get out its message. Martin speaks on a recording directed mostly at Republican voters; Friday gives a message to mostly Democrats.
The constituents of 17 legislators, including Lorene Coates of Rowan County, have been targeted. The legislators whose districts have been singled out are lawmakers who have not taken a clear position on the lottery, a spokesman for N.C. Citizens Against the Lottery says.
Coates told the Post Friday that she personally opposes a lottery and will vote against any measure on the House floor that calls for a referendum on a lottery. If a referendum ever reaches a ballot, she will vote against the lottery in the voting booth, Coates said.
Anti-lottery opponents plan a huge rally in front of the Legislative Building in Raleigh on the morning of May 8, a day when opponents also plan to walk the halls and saturate the offices of legislators.
Former Republican gubernatorial candidate Chuck Neely heads N.C. Citizens Against the Lottery, and he will be one of Tuesday night’s speakers in Rowan County.
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