Word: greyingly
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...Thomas Grey, 55, an Illinois pastor, is the merry messiah who has built a once lonely battle against a Mississippi riverboat casino into a nationwide crusade against gambling. A Dartmouth graduate and an infantry captain who served in Vietnam, Grey spent 250 nights on the road last year, "networking the fighters--Gideon's army," as he calls it. Whether rattling around the Midwest in his battered Toyota, the Mamas and the Papas playing on his tape deck, or flying on frenetic forays through Maryland, Mississippi, Kansas and Louisiana, he carries everywhere a camouflage-covered Bible. Also in his pocket...
Only last fall, the Maryland activists quashed casino-company efforts to turn Baltimore into a new Atlantic City, despite $1.3 million in industry campaign contributions to state legislators. But the gambling interests returned, with bills to allow slot machines at racetracks. "We're tightening the perimeter," says Grey, pacing the meeting hall. "If they penetrate the racetracks, the next step is slots in restaurants! Just today I got a call from New Hampshire: the legislature killed two bills to allow slots at dog tracks...
Fighting back, casino companies have showered politicians with campaign contributions, hired former Governors and former U.S. attorneys as lobbyists, and poured money into television advertising. Yet "we're winning the hearts and minds of the countryside," claims Grey, whose favorite prop is a map with red, white and blue pushpins stuck into the 23 states where his National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling (NCALG) has won victories during the past two years. Only two states--Missouri and South Dakota--are marked with green pushpins to indicate a gambling...
...with only limited success, to make gambling a moral issue in the presidential race. On the stump, Pat Buchanan routinely declares that "gambling should return to the swamp whence it came." Ralph Reed, executive director of the Christian Coalition, showed up at a recent press conference to launch Tom Grey's Washington office. "Gambling is a cancer on the body politic, destroying families, stealing food from the mouths of children, turning wives into widows," he said, noting that in 1994 the Republican Party accepted more than $1 million in gaming-industry funds. Without specifically mentioning Senator Bob Dole, who reaped...
...this attention has caught even Grey by surprise. His national coalition has barely any funds beyond small scattered donations from its 2,500 members, a $10,000 contribution from the Mormon Church to set up an 800 phone number, and Grey's own $3,000-a-month stipend from the Methodist Church. NCALG's new Washington office, in a back room of the National Council of Churches, is staffed by volunteers. "We're up against a multibillion-dollar industry," says Grey. "And we're beating them with housewives and dentists." The movement's strength lies in such groups as Virginians...