With 10 declared candidates jostling for a shot at the governor’s mansion in 2010, the angling for attention is sure to produce some seriously eye-popping proposals.
Enter the curious candidacy of state Sen. Robert Ford.

The Democrat from Charleston has based his campaign in part on the promise of bringing the video poker business back to the Palmetto State. The practice was pushed out of South
Carolina by the state Supreme Court in 1999.

On Nov. 30, the 61-year-old black former civil rights activist discussed his controversial plan that he believes could suture together the state’s unraveling economy.

The first thing Ford says he’ll do if elected governor is ask the General Assembly to bring video poker back to the state, either by a resolution or referendum, and then tax the revenue at 25 percent.

“If I win, [video] poker will come back in,” Ford says.

He adds that with it would come a $4 billion industry that could inject $1 billion into the state’s sputtering coffers and jump start employment growth with 40,000 new jobs and 3,000 new businesses. 

For many, it’s a preposterous proposition. Video poker has had a haunted history in South Carolina. Like the practice of payday lending, critics of the industry say it feeds off the funds of those who lack them the most. Its rebirth would be regressive, they argue, no matter how much money the government could gain.

“We saw what it did back in those days that it existed,” says Joe Mack, director of public policy at the South Carolina Baptist Convention. “The people who could least afford to play it seemed to be the people that played it, and it ruined a lot of families.”

Mack’s organization, which opposes all forms of gambling, was a key player in ridding the state of video poker in the ‘90s.

“We would be opposed to any attempt to revive it,” he says.

Ford believes that although video poker is currently illegal here, it doesn’t mean no digital dealing is happening behind closed doors.

“They’re underground,” Ford says. “They’re making more money now than ever before because they don’t have no employees, lobbyists and lawyers. They’re making a killing,” he says of illicit video poker parlors.

Ford says his plan — what he calls the Video Poker Stimulus Package — would bring $300 million in for education reform, $70 million for health care, $10 million for a rainy day fund and $250 million for local governments. 

But that would basically turn the government into a glorified bookie, says Rev. Brenda Kneece, executive director of the South Carolina Christian Action Council.

“Government should not base its revenue on the vices of its constituents,” she says.

O’Neal Compton, a professional actor whose resume includes parts in the movies Primary Colors and Nixon (as well as episodes of Seinfeld), acts as an unpaid media advisor to Ford’s gubernatorial campaign.

Compton has known Ford for 30 years and calls him a politician of modest means who can’t be bought. He points to Ford’s stance against the payday-lending lobby during the last legislative session as proof of it.

“He’s respected because he asks peoples’ opinions,” Compton says of the senator. “When he doesn’t know something, he asks about it. And when he does know something, he stands his ground.”

Ford has about $21,500 on hand for the governor’s race.