The Church Lady doesn’t like alcohol. She doesn’t like drugs. And she especially doesn’t like that sneakiest of temptations, the one that keeps seducing Illinois lawmakers with promises of glitz, glamour and easy riches.
Yes, if there’s one thing the Church Lady really, really hates, it’s gambling.
On days when the state legislature is in session, she packs her satchel and heads to the Capitol to wage her David-and-Goliath campaign against a giant industry that far outmatches her resources.
When the politicians aren’t in Springfield, she works the state, drumming up support among the network of churches she has cultivated over her career.
“We don’t have a lot of money,” she observes during a tea break from writing her latest “Action Alert,” an urgent letter warning her church network to get ready for what could be its biggest fight in years.
“What we do have,” she says with quiet passion, “is the truth about gambling-that it costs taxpayers a lot more than it pays back. It destroys people’s lives and devastates families. It is not a harmless activity, and we just have to get that truth out there.”
One might think that the Church Lady’s shoestring operation, staffed almost exclusively by grass-roots volunteers, wouldn’t be much of a force, especially when the well-funded casino crowd can, with less than a day’s notice, muster a battalion of representatives to descend on the Statehouse to start twisting arms.
But that assumption fails to factor in the diminutive but fiercely determined Anita Bedell, 58, the soft-spoken former typing and history teacher who runs Illinois Church Action on Alcohol and Addiction Problems out of a small brown house converted into office space.
From these humble offices on Springfield’s Jefferson Street, the Church Lady, as critics have dubbed Bedell, has been taking on the likes of the Harrah’s, Mandalay and Argosy casinos for 13 years, helping to thwart the industry’s yearly efforts to expand the reach of gambling around the state.
These days, Bedell is up against what may turn into the political fight of her life. Illinois lawmakers are desperately looking for new sources of tax revenue to bolster the anemic state treasury. Among the most tempting possibilities is to issue licenses for several new casinos, including the riverboats long sought for Chicago’s suburbs and, most particularly, the land-based gambling hall that Mayor Richard M. Daley wants to put in downtown Chicago.
With two days left in its lame-duck session, the General Assembly can still act on a casino proposal before lawmakers-elect are sworn in for their new terms on Wednesday. If that doesn’t materialize, casino forces are certain to push for a blockbuster deal before the spring session ends in May.
But not if Anita Bedell has her way.
If you were to ask central casting for someone to play a church lobbyist, she’d look just like Anita Bedell.
From the top of her gray pageboy haircut to the sensible Red Wings recommended by her podiatrist, she is the modern face of the temperance movement, of which she is a direct descendant.
Usually clad in prim mid-calf skirts and those flat-heeled shoes, she uses minimal makeup and, if not for her diamond wedding ring and the pin she wears on her lapel, she might be mistaken for a plain-clothes nun.
Her demeanor is as understated as her appearance. She speaks softly, often requiring people to lean forward to understand her. But her message is clear.
“She’s not at all wishy-washy,” says Denny Jacobs, the veteran Democratic senator from East Moline known to colleagues as the father of riverboat gambling. “She is always there as the faithful opposition.”
Says Rep. Donald Moffitt, a Downstate Republican more sympathetic to her cause: “All David was armed with was his sling. She’s just armed with conviction and facts.”
Though some call her Church Lady in a derisive way, they still listen to what she says, because even if she’s just one woman in the audience clutching her pocketbook, elected officials know she will hold them accountable for what they do. She can turn up at the Capitol with a horde of gambling opponents to make fence-sitting lawmakers think twice before voting aye on a gambling bill-perhaps by holding a prayer vigil.
“She’s the person who leads the pack on those issues,” says former State Sen. Patrick O’Malley, a Palos Park conservative who was a strong anti-gambling voice in the legislature. “People know she’s driven by ideals, goals and aspirations for the betterment of the public. They listen to her.”
Even before things reach the floor, when the flashy casino lobbyists make their pitch to a legislative committee, they must at some point step aside in the hearing room for the inevitable monologue from the Church Lady.
She often debunks the idea that gambling-she spurns the industry’s preferred term, “gaming”-is glamorous and fun. “I’ve looked at the eyes of the people in a casino,” she says. “They look sad. They look desperate. You see senior citizens with slot cards hooked to their clothing so they don’t forget to take their cards out of the machines. They’re putting money in two slot machines at a time.
“I once saw a woman win a jackpot of $300. There was no joy. She immediately picked up the money and put it in her cup and started over.”
She is modest about her role in the years-long battle against gambling. “There are a lot of people working on this,” she says. “I’m just one of them.”
But Bedell is perhaps the most effective warrior in the crusade because she knows her audience and how to reach it, and because she simply hangs in there, on the theory that influence is sometimes the art of being present.
TO UNDERSTAND WHY gambling has been one of the state’s biggest and longest-running political brawls, it helps to know a few basics about the economics of casinos.
First off, a casino means big money for whoever is lucky enough to own one. Huge money. Last year, proprietors at the state’s nine riverboat ports grossed nearly $1.7 billion. The recent round of bidding to win the state’s 10th and, for the moment, last open license shows that investors think it’s worth at least half a billion dollars just to get the right to operate.
Secondly, casinos spin off millions of dollars to their “host communities” every year, generating everything from jobs on the boat to more traffic at the local gas stations.
Third-and this is a big one-they gush out buckets full of money for the governments that tax and regulate them. That means cash for state and local officials to spend on popular items like roads and police cars.
While tax revenues from gambling pay for a small fraction of the state budget, the portion that politicians actually get to play with-the “new” money that comes in over and above the previous year’s take and is therefore not earmarked-an additional casino starts to resemble manna from heaven.
So why hasn’t the legislature licensed more casinos since 1990, the year lawmakers established the original 10 licenses for riverboats around the state? Why have dozens of monied interests and high-priced lobbyists failed to get more casinos approved for nearly 15 years?
Far and away the biggest reason is that competing political interests have always done each other in. Downstate lawmakers won’t vote for a casino for the city if there isn’t something in it for them. Suburban legislators want in on the action too, demanding financial protection for the showcase of horse racing, Arlington International Racecourse, and other nearby tracks. The clout-heavy racetracks don’t want anyone moving in on their turf, figuring that if bettors have other opportunities to gamble nearby, they won’t wager as much on the ponies.
Giving each of the vying interests an equal take in the deal-and then convincing them it’s the best they can get-is like trying to play three-dimensional chess by committee. Any deal inevitably collapses under its own weight.
Hovering over the whole process is the possibility of a voter backlash against politicians perceived as too casino-friendly. A recent Tribune poll showed that 64 percent of Illinois residents disapprove of opening more gambling casinos as a way to help solve the state’s budget problems. Elected officials don’t easily tune out numbers like that.
Money may talk in Springfield, but grass-roots groups talk to the folks back home. That’s where Anita Bedell and the churches come in.
HER ORGANIZATION TRACES its roots to the anti-alcohol movement of the late 1800s. The Evanston-based Women’s Christian Temperance Union was strong in the northern part of the state, but central Illinois had a devoted chapter of the Ohio-based Anti-Saloon League.
More Top Picks Closet Organizers
The chapter survived the Prohibition era and has flourished ever since, though both its title and its mission have morphed over time. In 1965, the name was changed to Illinois Church Action on Alcohol Problems; in 1992, its agenda was transformed in keeping with its traditional mission, namely temperance-a word defined by the Greek philosopher Xenophon as “moderation in all things healthful, total abstinence from all things harmful.”
A rabble-rousing Methodist minister named Tom Grey first suggested to the group’s board that its activities should include a seat on the anti-gambling bandwagon. Bedell’s church group soon joined up with Grey and other activists campaigning against gambling.
“There’s a lot of cross-addiction,” says Grey, a national anti-gambling activist who got his start in Illinois. “This was a natural collaboration with a group concerned about the alcohol problems that accompany gambling addiction. We have anti-smoking people who work with us in other states. When this is seen as a public health issue, it makes us, together, a more formidable force.”
A lifelong Roman Catholic, Bedell, along with her husband, raised their two sons with a heavy emphasis on being alcohol- and drug-free. (In high school, she shared the grief of her closest friend when a drunken driver killed the friend’s father and brother. Later, at Illinois State University in the 1960s, she recoiled from what she saw of the drug culture.)
But the straight-laced Bedell was mostly a stay-at-home mother before joining the Illinois Church Action group in 1990 as an administrative assistant and eventually becoming its executive director. She’d never even been to a casino.
“I knew nothing about gambling,” she says. “I just knew in my heart it was wrong.”
Others in the cause took one look at the quiet churchgoer and wondered if she were the right choice for the job. “I thought, ‘My goodness, this is a high-stakes fight. She’s so quiet and unassuming,'” says Grey, who says he was quickly proven wrong.
Another problem for Bedell was that she had a phobia about speaking in public. When she was in 8th grade, growing up in tiny Downstate Pocahontas, she was asked to make a formal introduction of another student at an all-school assembly. When she stood to talk, she could barely form the words.
“My mouth got so dry,” she recalls. “I said, ‘I will never speak in public again.’ “
And mostly she avoided doing so. Until 1994.
After taking over as leader of the church action group, the novice lobbyist had begun boning up on gambling issues, reading research studies and opinion surveys, attending conferences and, finally, touring a couple of casinos in Mississippi.
But even with all that under her belt, she didn’t think she was nearly prepared to speak when the Illinois House held a hearing in 1994 on gambling. She intended to sit silently and listen as one casino proponent after another came up to the microphones and testified about the bounties of gambling.
Then, without warning, the hearing chairman, Rep. Lou Lang (D-Skokie), began singling out the anti-casino advocates in the room and asking each of them why they didn’t want a new casino in Illinois.
When Bedell’s turn came, she cleared her throat and found that the words came surprisingly easily. “Casinos don’t attract tourists,” she recalls telling Lang. “They attract gamblers.”
The sound bite aired on the local news. A Springfield pastor happened to see the newscast and called Bedell, saying he wanted to get involved in the anti-gambling effort. He brought with him several members of his congregation to collect signatures for a ballot referendum drive.
The moment was an epiphany for Bedell, who suddenly saw how she could go toe to toe with the million-dollar lobbyists, how she could deal with lawmakers who seemed so eager to hurry her off the stage.
A day with Anita Bedell is a marathon of non-stop talking. And e-mailing. And phoning. And faxing. And writing letters. And then phoning some more.
For most people, the holiday season at their workplace was pretty quiet, but Bedell spent it gearing up for the expected legislative fight. One recent day began at 9 a.m. with the staff devotional, at which she read a passage from the Apostle Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi: “Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice.”
Then she cranked up her ailing computer to write her own epistle, an Action Alert addressed to the faithful throughout the state. It would go out to 150 fax machines and 150 e-mail addresses, with a note at the bottom that said, “Forward this message to five people, and share it with your church.”
In the Action Alert, she warned that “pro-gambling legislators are making a last-ditch effort to ram a massive gambling expansion bill through,” and attempting to “pull the governor behind closed doors to make a backroom deal.”
She asked people to send out letters-preferably personal holiday greeting cards-to Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who has the power to veto any bill that expands gambling.
In her alerts-there were 35 of them in 2004-and in her other writings, Bedell frequently cites the work of Earl Grinols, a Baylor University economist who calculates gambling’s cost to the community by measuring how it affects things like crime, business costs, bankruptcy, domestic violence and divorce. He estimates that gambling costs its host region about $3 for every $1 of benefits it creates.
In Illinois last year, Bedell points out, state and local governments earned $700 million in tax revenue from casinos, compared to the $1.7 billion that gamblers lost.
Government shouldn’t be living off the misfortune of its own citizens, gambling opponents say. “If there’s a problem with faulty tires, they recall the tires,” Bedell argues. “They put special safety caps on aspirin. Yet the government wants to expand gambling even knowing that it will destroy thousands and thousands of lives.”
Her rhetoric is an effective example to others, say leaders of the movement around the country.
“She always knows what she’s talking about,” says Dan Ireland, executive director of the American Council on Alcohol Problems.
And Grey says that sticking with the facts has served Bedell well. “Her arguments have always been mathematical,” he says. “A group like hers, you could see them going after this on a prohibitionist model. But that wouldn’t work.
“They very clearly saw that you had to take gambling on [by tackling] its promises: Instead of economic development, it’s bad economics; instead of a painless revenue stream, you have people suffering from it . . . They have kept themselves extremely credible.”
The Illinois movement has increased its effectiveness by attracting both conservatives and liberals. Despite their differences on other issues, lawmakers from the left and the right will often stand together at an anti-gambling press conference, the liberals concerned about poverty and addiction and the conservatives focused on morality issues.
Bedell’s own group includes churches and members from most points on the religious and political compass, among them United Methodists, Southern Baptists, Nazarenes, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Catholics and Churches of Christ. Regular allies also include Jewish and Muslim groups, as well as the conservative Eagle Forum and the left-leaning good-government group IVI-IPO.
Together they have racked up some solid wins.
In 1995, they helped persuade lawmakers not to loosen Illinois law to permit telephone wagering, which would have allowed people to wager on horse races from their homes.
They also have fended off moves to legalize video poker in bars, taverns and veterans halls. Through it all, the gambling interests have never been able to win a single new license.
On the other hand, the anti-gambling coalition has suffered some heartbreaking losses. A memorable one came at the end of the spring session in 1999, when Bedell thought the activists had managed to fight off a mega-casino deal. Among other things, the package envisioned allowing a casino in Rosemont or elsewhere in Cook County for the first time, slashing taxes on racetracks and allowing current casino operators to expand their empires within Illinois.
The deal also proposed granting riverboats “dockside rights,” which would let them remain docked permanently at their ports instead of being required to chug lazily up and down river.
The churches’ argument against that was that if people could simply wander on and off the riverboats-originally sold to the public as quaint tourist attractions-the casinos would become little more than hard-core betting parlors. At that time a novice at the lobbying game, Bedell thought they had won their battle when the Illinois House declined to pass the measure that night.
But shortly afterward, she passed a casino lobbyist standing at the brass rail in the center of the Capitol’s cavernous rotunda. “You may have stopped this tonight,” he said ominously, “but you haven’t stopped it for good.”
Sure enough, the big gambling package was resurrected in the House the next night, and this time Bedell and fellow church lobbyist Jean Lowe were unable to affect the proceedings. The House chambers seemed impenetrable. Lawmakers weren’t coming out to talk, even though Bedell was trying to get word to them through the House doorkeepers.
“All we could do,” she remembers, “is sit and watch and pray.”
Meanwhile, pro-gambling legislators lobbied their reticent colleagues on the House floor. Observers remarked that the scene resembled a bazaar, where votes were being traded like chattel.
“When I lost in the House, I cried,” she said.
Then she went back to work and wrote an Action Alert, and church activists worked all weekend. Some 50 church members showed up on Monday for prayer vigils before and during the Senate vote. But the measure passed anyway, marking the most significant victory for gambling interests in nearly a decade.
Bedell was devastated. “I needed a transcript the next day, but when I came over [to the Capitol], I thought, ‘How can I go into this building?’ “
As she stood on the steps, she experienced a revelation: “God said, ‘You did what you could. You told the truth’ . . . I came into the building and it was OK.”
Bedell says she often leans on her faith for strength, though she doesn’t wear her religion on her sleeve and is careful to stick to evidence about social cost and utility when trying to win people to her cause.
But when asked, she’s candid about what keeps her going.
“I pray before I come into the building,” she says. “I pray when I’m in the building that God will give me the words to say. When I get those big bills [proposed legislation] I pray that God will help me see what I need to see in them . . . I’m praying that God will help me break through the deception and speak the truth.”
As for Bedell’s opponents, they credit her with sincerity and dedication, but little else.
More Top Picks Why My Smart Child Cant Read Hidden Reasons Explained
For one thing, they dispute the anti-gambling results of opinion polls. Sure, they argue, people may say they’re against more gambling if the question is asked in that way. But what if it were posed this way: “Would you accept the higher taxes that come with that choice?”
Sen. Jacobs, the biggest casino supporter in the General Assembly, respects Bedell for never getting nasty or personal in their long-running fight. But he doubts her data about the toll that gambling takes on the community and on compulsive gamblers.
He also thinks Bedell approaches the issue from an unrealistic point of view. She starts from the standpoint “that, basically, we should have no gaming,” says Jacobs. “That’s fine. But that’s a Utopian ideal. We do have gaming, and we should maximize the dollars for the schoolchildren of the state as well as those that do get benefit from it.”
Ed Duffy, a consultant to the horse-racing industry, goes a step further, questioning whether Bedell’s crusade has had much impact, given that the gambling industry continues to flourish in Illinois.
“I think she’s well-intentioned, and I also believe she believes very strongly in what she says,” Duffy says. “But I don’t believe she has been very effective . . . Her goal is to stop it all from happening, and obviously that hasn’t happened.”
But activists in the movement say that’s a ridiculous standard for measuring success. Bedell, Grey and the churches say they are able to force the casino interests into a two-sided debate. While everyone else is talking about the flow of money to be had, the organization points out the downside of legislative proposals and reveals details that the dealmakers don’t bring to light.
And they do so on a playing field that is far from even. During heated committee hearings, Bedell and Lowe are usually in the audience taking notes on bills and amendments they have had little time-sometimes an hour or less-to review. While gambling-industry lobbyists can take corporate jets to Chicago meetings of the Illinois Gaming Board, Bedell takes the 6 a.m. Amtrak from Springfield. In just one month last year, a single riverboat made $34 million. In all of last year, Bedell’s pay came to $34,000.
“She’s just undaunted,” says Moffitt. Often, he notes, “there is a roomful of people, and there are prestigious and high-powered lobbyists on one side . . . and there’s Anita. She comes off as unintimidated. I don’t think she’s the least bit threatened as she makes her case.”
Perhaps even her friends didn’t realize the extent of Bedell’s resolve until last winter when she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent surgery followed by almost seven weeks of daily radiation therapy. The treatment left her exhausted, but she refused to take time off from work during the spring legislative session in February and March.
Instead, she moved her mother’s old recliner into her office so she could take a break when she got tired. Many days, though, she didn’t even have a chance to do that.
“One day-I think it was maybe only my third or fourth day of treatment-I got a call that there was a press conference on the expansion of gambling,” Bedell remembers. She attended, despite her condition. “Sometimes you just don’t have a choice.”
By last November’s fall veto session, Bedell says, she was back at full strength and ready for the fight.
She’ll probably get one. Lawmakers return to the capital this week to get down to some difficult fiscal business. Every new piece of information about the state’s financial situation is worse than the last, and pretty soon the legislature will have to deal with a multimillion-dollar deficit.
It’s the kind of crisis that makes people start searching for quick sources of money. And there are plenty of suggestions floating around.
Mayor Daley wants a casino for Chicago. Senate President Emil Jones, Daley’s Democratic ally in Springfield, likes the idea and sees a glint of gold for beleaguered south suburban communities.
Gov. Blagojevich has said he doesn’t much like the idea of more gambling, but he’s also made it clear he’d accept all kinds of fiscal gymnastics before adding a hike in the personal income tax or the sales tax to his political resume.
Rank-and-file lawmakers, meanwhile, are furious that Blagojevich won’t publicly outline for them the kind of gambling bill he’d sign-and what kind of bill he’d humiliate them with by rejecting. So the parties remain at an impasse.
The standoff has worked in Bedell’s favor so far, but she doesn’t want to rely on fortune or circumstance. She spent the holidays reading and preparing, girding herself for the inevitable onslaught to come.
The Church Lady also believes she has an ace up her primly cut sleeve.
“I’ll pray,” she says.