In a Friday appearance on Huntsville WVNN's "The Dale Jackson Show," State Senate Pro-Tem Garlan Gudger (R-Cullman) explained why he decided to shut down lottery and gambling legislation in the 2025 legislative session.
Gudger said after doing a headcount, there were not enough votes "to even get into that topic," so he decided to shut down what is "the most strenuous topic" the legislature has to deal with every year. He told host Dale Jackson that the lawmakers wanted to focus on other legislation they could get done.
“We ended up pulling our consensus together of all of our colleagues in the Senate doing an independent vote count and just looking at the numbers there. We just don't have the votes. There were just two less votes to even get into that topic. And so we decided we needed to shut it down, or we're going into it."
"And as you well know, Dale, when you go into it, it takes all the air out of the room. ... But we did not have the votes to go forward. And I'm not going to put my colleagues through what it takes to go through that particular topic, which is the most strenuous topic that we deal with, it seems like, each year. And so, we want to focus on things that they wanted to get done, their constituents wanted to get done. And so that is what my decision was yesterday as the pro-tem.”
The North Alabama Republican said that once gambling was discussed, other bills would be affected, which he noted was "truly not fair."
“Every time that you have a conversation, once this topic comes up, everyone starts leveraging what they need or what they want out of this particular bill into other topics that they're having to deal with," Gudger outlined. "And it's truly not fair.”
He continued, “I don't want to put the rest of my colleagues through that strenuous time and effort and worrying about other entities and issues that we have to talk about that are important to Alabama. So I said, we're going to stop this right here. And this was what we were presented with the full comprehensive package, which had been taking on bingo halls, sports betting and the lottery all rolled into one.”
According to Gudger, the gambling discussion in 2024 "exhausted" every lawmaker to the point where the topic may not come up again until the next quadrennium.
“I think it was the right decision to make," he stated. "I think it was the right decision to make for Alabama. And so as we are looking at this one-pager, which was the full comprehensive package, it just wasn't the right time to do that.”
"It's going to come back at some point," Gudger advised.
To connect with the author of this story or to comment, email [email protected].
Don't miss out! Subscribe to our newsletter and get our top stories every weekday morning.
