With America's gambling mecca on its western border and lotteries and gaming on reservation casinos in every other direction, Utah is surrounded by legalized gambling.
So what are the odds that Utah might ever join 48 of its sister states and allow some form of gambling? What's the betting line? Hint: There are long odds and there are Utah odds, and Utah odds are longer."Hawaii sooner or later will pass a gaming bill. It's only a matter of time. It makes so much sense there," said Randy Baker, a professor of gaming studies at the University of Nevada, Reno, referring to the only other state prohibiting gambling.
Recent polls show more than 60 percent of Hawaii residents favor a lottery, and lawmakers are considering legislation to establish pari-mutuel horse racing.
"Utah is a different story," Baker acknowledged.
Gambling opponents in the Beehive State cite the social problems associated with gambling and an economy - one of the more robust in the nation - generating more than 47,000 new jobs last year and a record surplus of tax dollars without the aid of a lottery, casinos or pari-mutuel tracks.
Gov. Mike Leavitt partially attributes Utah's economic good fortune to not having gaming in the state.
"Economies based on false principles of getting something for nothing don't prosper in the long term," said Leavitt, sounding one of the many arguments grounded in the state's conservative Mormon culture.
That culture has quickly snuffed out attempts to introduce games of chance ranging from bingo fund-raisers to pari-mutuel wagering and is battling gaming over the Internet.
But Leavitt, a Mormon, is quick to add that he doesn't condemn the border states that do have gambling.
Utah spectators account for 90 percent of the attendance at the Wyoming Downs horse racing track in nearby Evanston, Wyo. At the Quick Stop convenience store in Malad, Idaho, owner Bob Green said Utah residents buy 90 percent of the lottery tickets he sells annually.
And cars with Utah license plates typically outnumber those from other states in casino parking lots in the Nevada border towns of Wendover and Mesquite.
Since arriving in the Great Basin in the 1840s, leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have let outsiders know gambling wasn't welcome within state borders.
"Let a judge pass a decree that . . . a gambling saloon shall be established in our city and we will give him the privilege to get out of the city as quickly as he can," early Mormon leader Brigham Young preached in an 1866 sermon.
That sentiment has been passed on to succeeding generations of Mormons, who continue to dominate the state's political and business circles.
In the early 1970s, local police busted some Catholic nuns for operating a fund-raising bingo game; vice officers have cited local bars for holding betting pools on sporting events; voters soundly rejected a proposal in 1992 to allow pari-mutuel horse wagering; and the state's attorney general recently sounded a warning against placing bets over the Internet.
With persistence, and sparing none of its most plentiful resource - money - the gaming industry has conquered powerful opponents before.
Gambling interests poured $11.5 million into their effort to get slot machines on Missouri riverboats and offered $20 million to two political consultants if they could land a casino license.
More often than not, the expensive effort has paid off. According to studies, legalized gambling has increased 2,800 percent over the past two decades and revenues have soared from $17 billion in 1975 to $482 billion in 1995.
The growth prompted Congress on Tuesday to pass a resolution creating a commission that would establish a data base on the positive and negative aspects of gaming. Supporters said cities and states could use the information to base their decisions on whether to allow a lottery or casino.
The data and recommendations may never be used in Utah, an area the gambling industry has apparently written off as a no-win proposition.
"Utah's never been considered. Absolutely not," said Baker, a former public affairs director for Promus, the former owner of Harrahs, and who organized lobbying efforts to establish gaming in jurisdictions around the country.
Jon Freston, a Mormon and racing horse dealer who helped head the ill-fated effort in 1992 to establish pari-mutuel wagering in Utah, said the industry's vast resources are no match to the ensconced statewide network of Mormon congregations, to which 70 percent to 75 percent of the population belong.
All it takes is for local Mormon bishops to read from the pulpit a statement from the church's governing First Presidency either supporting or opposing an issue they deem to be a moral one and the majority is mobilized to carry out the directive, Freston said.
"We tried to sell some fun on the weekends and help the horse breeding industry; they preached the people would go to hell, so how do you fight that?" he asked.
In Idaho, where Mormons make up roughly one-third of the population, the church's influence failed to defeat a constitutional amendment in 1988 establishing a lottery.
While it raised $20 million for education and state buildings this fiscal year, Idaho House Speaker Michael Simpson, a Mormon Republican from Blackfoot who occasionally buys a ticket, contends it's a terrible way to raise revenue.
"For many people, gambling causes problems," Simpson said. "As a state we are putting something before people that will cause problems to raise revenue."
Studies have shown the economic benefits of lotteries and other forms of gambling, with the exception of Nevada, are limited when compared to the amount citizens spend and the associated social costs.
The Center for the Studies of the States, a think tank at State University of New York, found that after prizes and administrative costs are paid out, only an average 40 percent of lottery sales actually make it to state programs.
Baker said the industry downplays the economic benefits of gambling and those who overstate the economic impact are either uninformed or dishonest.
"I make it crystal clear that gambling isn't a pancea for social ills," he said.
While casinos produce jobs, Baker said, they can cannibalize an established entertainment market in the short term and exacerbate the problems of compulsive gamblers.
Despite the studies and statements by the experts and Utah's history, Leavitt said if the economy takes a turn for the worse, he expects gambling to surface as a solution.
But as in the past, he doesn't expect it to get very far.
Freston said there's a joke among horse racing enthusiasts about three of their kind dying and while in heaven, asking God if pari-mutuel betting will ever be allowed in Utah.
"He said, `Yes, but not in my lifetime,' " Freston said. "That pretty much sums it up."