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Every day of the year, in the morning and the evening, the international gamblers gather at the modest, tree-shaded dock in Little River, S.C., a coastal fishing village that has found itself at ground zero in the state's vociferous gambling debate.
Aboard the Stardancer, a 158-foot-long boat outfitted with roulette wheels and 200 slot machines, the gamblers wait out a ride into the Atlantic Ocean that takes an hour and 15 minutes. Once the boat is in international waters, just beyond three miles out to sea, the poker cards come out, the wheels start clicking and the games begin.
For several years, local residents and some state legislators have worked to oust the Stardancer and the two other gambling boats operating in the state -- also out of the Little River dock -- representing what many see as the latest incursion of gambling interests in the coastal South. But their efforts were hurt last Monday when the South Carolina Supreme Court upheld a 1999 circuit court decision allowing the casino boats to operate.
The court emphasized that responsibility for any future banning of the boats lies with the South Carolina General Assembly, which can legally opt out of federal Johnson Act, which allows gambling on U.S.-based vessels after they leave the three-mile limit of territorial waters. In 1999 and in 2000, the state House passed legislation banning the boats, only to see the proposal defeated in the state Senate.
The gambling issue has been a bitter one in South Carolina. Last July, gambling opponents finally succeeded in banishing the video-poker parlors, featuring as many as 35,000 gaming machines, that had sprung up without legal authorization in the 1970s and 1980s, and came to dominate the roadsides of border communities such as Little River. After a major battle, a statewide lottery, with proceeds intended for public education, is gearing up to start next year.
In this state, as with many other southern states struggling with lottery and casino issues, some of the most vocal opponents have been churches, disturbed by what they see as damage done to family life by gambling. But opponents say their objections go beyond moral considerations.
"It's fundamentally a quality-of-life issue," said state Rep. George "Chip" Campsen III, a Republican who has twice introduced the bill banning the boats. "It's an issue of what people want their communities to be and look like. I don't personally engage in gambling, but if other people want to do it, fine. Do it in Atlantic City or Las Vegas."
The ruling by the state's high court touched on a facet of the gambling industry that is relatively new, and growing -- the fully equipped casino boat that transports its players to international waters, where they can legally play blackjack, dice and three-card poker, then halts the games and motors back to shore. Florida has 17 of the boats, operating from Jacksonville to Miami; Georgia has one; South Carolina, its three -- all began operating during the past three years from Little River.
Sam Gray, the president and chief executive of the Stardancer in South Carolina and five of the Florida gambling boats, said the court's decision helps to establish casino-boat gambling nationwide. Gray, who filed the suit, argues that the business has been a boon to the local economy, "filling up motel rooms at night and all the restaurants." The Stardancer alone employs 150 people, he said.
"But these three little boats in Little River are a mere speck when it comes to business in South Carolina," Gray said. "For all the hoopla, the state is risking a growing cruise-ship business."
Although happy about the ruling, Gray said he doubts the legal battle is finished. "They've been after us for three years," he said. "It's never over, because this is the type of thing people love to hate."
South Carolina Attorney General Charlie Condon, who had appealed the lower-court ruling that favored Stardancer to the state Supreme Court, said he plans to ask the high court to rehear the case. As written, he said, the ruling with its ambiguity about international waters creates "a giant loophole that anyone can sail or paddle through in order to operate a gambling casino."
He added that he interprets the decision to mean "floating casinos on Lake Murray, Lake Moultrie, Lake Hartwell, or on the Tyger or Ashley rivers are now legal. Casinos which float or travel by rail or truck are now legal. State gambling laws were never intended to stop at the water's edge."
Gray said he finds Condon's interpretation "quite a leap."
"We have to travel an hour and 15 minutes to get out to three miles, where we can gamble, and we have to travel an hour and 15 minutes to get back. If Condon's comments were true, we could untie our lines and go up the Little River inlet," Gray said.
Kathleen "Kat" Bivens, of the local Citizens Against Casino Gambling, watches with dismay each day as the casino boats pass by her waterfront home. But she sees a silver lining in the latest court ruling; now, she says, gambling opponents will be galvanized to put more pressure on their state legislators to do something about the boats. It gives them a fresh rallying point, she said.
"This is just a beautiful place, and we were here first," said Bivens, a retired banker who has written many letters to editors of local newspapers about the issue. "What these boats are doing, they're bringing in trash, and I mean that in every sense of the word."
Little River, an unincorporated onetime fishing village, sits just below the North Carolina state line. Bivens said the waterfront restaurant where she and her husband were married is now a gambling ship ticket office. But there are triumphs: Since the forced departure of the video-poker parlors last year, the former site of "Touch of Vegas" has become a furniture store.
Bivens said if South Carolinians do not wake up, they may find themselves in a similar position as Mississippi, where offshore gambling casinos have altered the landscape and, according to critics, created social problems.
"You wait. If it's not stopped, those boats are going to be in Columbia, on Lake Thurmond, outside of Augusta at the Masters [golf] tournament, all over Charleston. It's going to happen," she said. "If this is allowed to continue and proliferate, our view here is going to be neon lights. Look at what happened to Mississippi."
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