Like many people, I was surprised that voters rejected the proposal for a Washington County racetrack/casino on Nov. 6. I thought a majority would support the expansion of legalized gambling because the initiative was targeted to help Maine’s poorest county. Why not let Washington County try to jumpstart its economy? After all, fairness is a vital part of Maine’s political culture.

What I didn’t take into consideration was the power of another, perhaps even stronger, component of our political culture: purity. Maine likes to think of itself as pure. And gambling is certainly not pure.

What do I mean by pure? I went to dictionary.com and found 18 different meanings. What is amazing is how many of them seem to apply to our state, or at least its image. For example, one definition is “free from anything of a different, inferior, or contaminating kind; free from extraneous matter.”

Is this how we view our state? How would expanding gambling contaminate us?

Expanding gambling would accelerate the weakening of our state’s core. Instead of being self-reliant, hard-working and independent, we could become dependent, lazy and needy. (More like the rest of the nation.) Additionally, more of us might buy into the false notion that we can get ahead through luck and chance. In real life, the path to success is often long, uneventful and even sometimes boring.

Moreover, gambling is not essential for most people; it only distracts from the most important things in life. It is far inferior to saving and giving.

Do these arguments sound hypocritical? The state already has a lottery. All you have to do is go to the homepage of the Maine state lottery – www.mainelottery.com – and you can see Augusta is impure. You can watch live drawings for Powerball and even get information on how to become a lottery agent. In fiscal year 2006, more than $50 million from the state lottery was allocated to the state’s general fund.

Another definition of pure is “free from foreign or inappropriate elements.” This is a key element of the gambling discourse. One narrative is this: out-of-staters win, Mainers lose. For example, on the CasinosNo! Web site, number 10 of the top 10 reasons to reject Question 1 was worded this way: “Maine People lose. If Question One passes and a racetrack casino gets built in Washington County, someone might get rich, but it won’t be the residents of that chronically depressed area.”

While it is easy to characterize out-of-staters as foreigners, there is a second narrative at play: Southern Maine versus the “real” Maine. Guess which one is the foreigner?

Consider the following comment from Christine on the Bangor Daily News Web site, reacting to the vote: “Once again the way of life in Washington County is decided by those who do not live here.The people of Washington County showed overwhelming support for this, but I guess we are not capable of knowing what is best for us.”

While it is technically inaccurate to describe any part of Maine as foreign from any other part, the sentiments expressed in Christine’s comments are revealing. The use of “us” implies there is a “they.” The phrase “those who do not live here” suggests there is distance, or separateness.

This narrative also implies an inappropriateness. For example, Toni of Dennysville also wrote on the Web site: “I feel the rest of the state should not have had a chance to vote on the casino, because the jobs would not affect them.”

Pure can also be defined as “untainted with evil; innocent.” If gambling is evil, than the mere presence of the state lottery gives Maine at least a trace of vice.

However it is Maine’s innocence, or at least an image of innocence, which the expansion of gambling seems to threaten. On Oct. 28, the Sun Journal featured an editorial that stated, in part, that “the time for debating the merits of having gambling in Maine is over; it’s now time for discussions on strategies to cope with its existence.”

If it could only be that easy. “Coping with its existence” means stronger state regulation of the industry, as the editorial suggests. More forceful regulation of gambling implies it’s a permanent, and legitimate, part of our landscape.

But do the majority of Mainers want it to be?

A racino in Washington County could have led to calls for more gambling in other economically challenged areas. Why say yes to Calais and no to Oxford County? And then what? Additional gambling sites would necessarily lead to more calls for stronger state regulation. Then we would have no choice but to acknowledge our “bargain with the devil,” as some characterize legalized gambling. There goes our innocence.

When it comes to gambling, purity has trumped fairness, at least for now.

Karl Trautman is chairperson of the social sciences department at Central Maine Community College. He received his doctorate in political science from the University of Hawaii. He can be reached at [email protected].