Jonathan Zimmerman: Democrats, GOP Collude to Lure People into Gambling

Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University. He is the author of “Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory” (Yale University Press).

Here’s a quick election-year quiz: Name one issue where Republicans and Democrats consistently agree, no matter where they live. And if you get this question wrong, we can go double or nothing on the next one.

The answer, of course, is gambling. From taxes and the environment to abortion and same-sex marriage, it seems like America’s political parties have never been more polarized. But when it comes to state-regulated gambling, they’re often playing the same hand.

In Pennsylvania, where I make my home, a Republican-led legislature approved casinos in 2004; the measure was signed by a Democratic governor, Ed Rendell. Across the river in New Jersey, Republican governor Chris Christie is working with a majority-Democratic statehouse to introduce on-line gambling. And New York governor Andrew Cuomo – a Democrat – has joined hands with GOP lawmakers in support of legalized commercial casinos, which will complement the ones that already operate on the state’s Indian reservations....

One hundred years ago, ironically, America’s political parties also stood united – against gambling. In the 1890s, at the dawn of the Progressive Era, they worked together to ban the interstate distribution of lottery tickets. They also stepped up municipal enforcement of prohibition on gambling, which the muckraking police reporter Jacob Riis called “selfishness in its coldest form.”...