Kevin Flynn (5)

This fascinating book is about how the first modern state lottery, the New Hampshire Sweepstakes, began, in 1964. I picked it up because of the horse racing connection, and got intrigued by everything else that's in the story leading up to the race. How the NH Sweepstakes worked was that people bought $3 Sweeps tickets all year, and if their ticket was drawn during the big draw in the summer, they were assigned one of 300 horses nominated to the Sweepstakes race, run in September; then of those horses, 12 made it to the actual race, and those whose tickets matched the horses, hoped their horse won--so you had to be lucky at least twice! You were guaranteed a cash prize if your ticket was drawn for a horse, but of course the really big payoffs came to the people with tickets for the top three horses in the race. The NH Sweepstakes was modeled after the hugely popular Irish Sweepstakes race that raised money for a hospital charity, tickets for which were only supposed to be sold in Ireland, but brokers sold tickets in the US all the time and the American authorities turned a blind eye. In New Hampshire, the Sweeps was created to raise money for NH schools, because the state had no income tax or sales tax, and was having trouble raising property taxes all the time to cover expenses. And it ended up such a success that other states soon followed with their own lotteries, with and without a horse racing element, and the rest is history.

This book not only tells the whole story of the NH Sweep, but also the history of lotteries in the US. (Did you know that basically "America itself is the offspring of a lottery"? I learned in this book something I hadn't remembered from US history class, that King James I granted the Virginia Company of London the right to hold a lottery to raise money to establish the first permanent English colony in the New World: Jamestown. Ha!) Anyway back to the NH Sweepstakes: it took ten years for a dogged state legislator to get the initial law passed to form the lottery; then the governor supported it despite possible political fallout. They had to create everything from scratch, starting with a Commission to oversee the sweeps, which had to have no hint of corruption--lotteries had been outlawed in the United States since the really crooked Louisiana Lottery was finally ended, and many people opposed this from the start over fears it would be taken over by the Mob, and would bring in unsavory elements from other states to buy tickets in NH. There were also federal laws against transporting lottery tickets across state lines, so this had to be strictly a New Hampshire thing; the FCC didn't allow them to broadcast the winning names or numbers on tv or radio; the newspapers weren't supposed to even REPORT on the lottery outside of New Hampshire! There were a ton of obstacles to overcome, but the men in charge of this were able to get past them all, sometimes very creatively. Some of the stuff seems quaint to us today, looking back after 50 years of legal lotteries and multi-state megamillion jackpots, and it was fascinating to read about. People objected on moral grounds, including that playing the lottery would "weaken our character as a nation and make us ripe for communism," or that it would lead to "a rise in juvenile delinquency, foreclosures, racketeers, and--shockingly--people seeking to open charge accounts at local stores." !! The author tells a great story, playing up all of the many colorful characters involved in the Sweeps, from that former vaudeville performer turned state legislator, to the incorruptible FBI agent in charge of the Sweeps--who had solved the famous Brinks vault robbery!--to the underdog NH governor, to the opposition figures like the newspaper editors and preachers who railed against the sweeps, and of course he profiles some of the lottery ticket buyers. Hundreds of people wrote to ask for tickets, and there were some odd reasons they gave. I kept chuckling at the author's sense of humor and way with words, which came out in many fun little quotes: describing the 1950s, the era just ending as this story began: "Ike was liked, Lucy loved, and the Beaver was left to his devices." Proposing the sweepstakes was promising a big special event, and it "couldn't have been more seductive in that moment if [legislator] Pickett had proposed raising cash at a kissing booth with Kim Novak." The lottery director had to stump at many community events to raise support for the program, which involved many meals: "He was now on a revolving circuit of lunch and dinner, lunch and dinner, beef or chicken, beef or chicken, leather or feather?" Maybe these quotes aren't the funniest thing ever, but as I was reading what could have been a dry recounting of lots of political wrangling and financial minutiae, one of these would pop up and make me smile. And it wasn't a dry recounting at all, it's quite an interesting read. There's suspense throughout, at how that first race will turn out, but also at whether they'll be able to pull this thing off at all. I even learned in this book that "The Purple Gang" mentioned in Elvis Presley's song "Jailhouse Rock" was a REAL gang of criminals! I love fun little trivia like that.

Great book to read for a glimpse into an American past that will never come again.… (mehr)

In an age when almost every state runs multiple lottery games, it's hard to recall that state-run lotteries as we know them are a relatively new phenomenon. Started in 1964 to fund education without raising taxes, the New Hampshire Sweepstakes was the first legal state lottery of the twentieth century. The men responsible for bending the rules to make it a reality and prove it could be run successfully were the least-likely group of rebels you're ever likely to meet: State Representative Larry Pickett, a charismatic, colorful orator "whose ten-year battle to enact the sweepstakes stands as a model of legislative doggedness"; Governor John King, "the quintessential 1960s traditionalist" who never wanted to be governor in the first place; and Ed Powers, an ex-FBI agent and "one of those all-American guys" hired to run the sweepstakes whose prior claim to fame was solving the Great Brink's Robbery (detailed here in some detail). Flynn recounts the myriad uphill battles against church groups, organized opposition, the press, and the federal government's innumerable anti-gambling laws. Despite initial success, the New Hampshire Sweepstakes, like most lotteries, oversold its benefits ("In 1962, New Hampshire spent $2.4 million on state aid to education and ranked forty-fifth in the nation for educational spending. In 2012, New Hampshire spent $1.03 billion in state aid to education and ranked forty-sixth in the nation"). Recommended for those interested in lotteries and gambling and the nuts and bolts of the political process.… (mehr)

Kevin Flynn's "American Sweepstakes" is a fascinating look at how the modern lottery came to be. This book is throughly researched, and does a great job of presenting not only the political pressure and legal issues surrounding the development of the New Hampshire Sweepstakes. Although the book starts off slow (protracted state-level legislative battles rarely make for scintillating reading), I quickly found myself absorbed in the story - perhaps because it reminded me of my job in a regulatory agency.

Flynn manages to create a surprising amount of human interest - due in part to providing a significant amount of background on all of the major players. This book may be a bit too detailed for the casual reader, but does provide some surprisingly visceral moments - particularly in the horse race which decided the "big winners" of the first New Hampshire Sweepstakes.

All in all, "American Sweepstakes" was an enjoyable read. If you are interested in politics, history and government regulation, this book may be a good choice for you.… (mehr)