Kentucky: Steve Beshear a “One Issue” Governor

Senate President David Williams, R-Burkesville, suggested at a press conference on Wednesday that Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear exaggerated the current economic crisis in the commonwealth in order to gain support for his gambling bill.

He's been a one-issue governor up until this juncture," he said. "That's all he's had on his mind: establish one crisis after another that was unmanageable if you didn't have gambling revenue."

Beshear has been attempting to legalize video lottery terminals at race tracks, with revenue going both to the state and to help the horse industry.  But he has also been instrumental in trying to stymie the online gambling sector over the past 15 months.

Late last year, the Kentucky Governor tried unsuccessfully to seize some 141 online gambling domain names, claiming the offshore companies were "leeches" to the state's own gambling industry, more specifically Churchill Downs. Beshear, through his Chicago-based attorneys, is still fighting to have the online gambling names seized following a decision in an Appeals Court favoring the sector and prohibiting such an action.

The state falls about $888 million short in its 2010 budget and Beshear's only answer seems to lie with legalized gambling. Beshear announced that Kentucky could face a budget shortfall of more than $1.5 billion over the next two years.

Jagajeet Chiba, Gambling911.com