Two Thousand Twenty Four is the 50th anniversary of some momentous public developments: the climax of the Nixon Watergate scandal – the only impeachment inquiry to lead to a Presidential resignation – the election of Lewiston’s Jim Longley, the first independent state governor elected anywhere in America in forty years.

That same year saw Maine burst on to the national gaming scene a few weeks after the state sold its first lottery tickets in 141 years. [The very first winner was Lewiston mechanic Ivan Lazure, who won a $20 jackpot.] While ten states before Maine had gone into the lottery business, Maine’s venture into government gambling was accompanied by more national drama than the others. But first, let’s take a look at is intriguing antecedents.

Though in 1963 New Hampshire became the first state in modern memory to enact a state lottery, they were once a common staple of government finance. In 1776, the First Continental Congress established a lottery to help fund the War of Independence against Britain.

Some state and local governments followed suit. Maine was among these when in 1821 the legislature authorized a lottery to raise money to help build the Oxford & Cumberland Canal in southwestern Maine.

Americans began to re-evaluate the wisdom of lotteries when their proliferation made oversight a challenge and abuses began to emerge. Maine based religious publications – ever an influence in 19th century culture – crusaded against them. Zion’s Advocate, a Baptist paper, and the Congregational Christian Mirror were among these. The latter in an October 1832 issue likened lotteries to “piracy and robbery,” insisting that “if the lottery system were better known people would flee from them as venomous snakes or ravenous beasts.”

And so in 1833, the Maine legislature and Governor Smith of Wiscasset put an end to them.

Nearly all other states in this era also put on the brakes.

The post-Civil War generation saw Louisiana hosting a revival. A New York based gambling syndicate took refuge in New Orleans where the state legalized a state ordained franchise for nearly thirty years before the state itself took it over in the 1890s. Scandals were associated with perceived widespread bribery of state and even federal legislators. These, along with persistent exhortation of anti-gambling reformers led to the passage in that decade of federal legislation that outlawed the use of the mails in the distribution of lottery tickets. Enforcement of this law shut down Louisiana’s initiative, the only remaining lottery in 1894.

The federal interest in tamping down on lotteries was reiterated in 1934 when Congress, as part of the Federal Communications Act told radio stations they could not broadcast the outcomes of lottery sweepstakes.

When in 1963 New Hampshire became the first state in nearly 70 years to establish one it was forcefully reminded of the federal legislation by long time US House Judiciary Chair Emanuel Celler of New York. in calling on Attorney General Robert Kennedy to enforce the lottery statutes Celler took aim at fellow Democrat John King:

“Governor King of New Hampshire promises honest administration. I tell him that it will take a miracle if he can have any kind of honest administration because the opportunities for crookedness are so pervasive.”

Though Kennedy did not take action, in 1964 Maine’s U.S Attorney Alton Lessard of Lewiston issued a warning that transporting New Hampshire lottery tickets across state lines violated federal law.

By 1965 federal prosecutors in New York proceeded to enforce the law indicting a defendant for bringing some 75 lottery ticket acknowledgements into the state from New Hampshire. The defendant contended that the federal law could not apply to a state run enterprise. However, the Supreme Court in 1966 agreed with federal prosecutors, backed in part by a brief on their behalf by future Justice Thurgood Marshall that such a prosecution was within the scope of federal law.

Despite the federal prosecution in New York, voters there amended its state constitution to authorize a state lottery. The following year – 1967 – the Empire state became the second in modern times – after New Hampshire – to host a state lottery. The state acknowledged the federal ban on mails and broadcast media, however, by prohibiting their use by the new lottery system.

The supposed grip of federal law was tightened even further in 1968 by passage of a law that barred federally chartered banks from handling lottery funds. It was ironically a law some New York based banks had sought as a way out of their being forced into becoming part of lottery financial processing.

By the time Maine entered the field in June of 1974, it became the eleventh state to do so, following in the footsteps of all other New England states except Vermont.

Soon after several Maine newspapers – including Maine times, the Ellsworth American and three Portland newspapers Press Herald, Evening Express and Sunday Telegram – gave prominent attention to the various federal laws the lottery was not observing. This crusade was led in part by former Washington Post editor and one time United Nations Ambassador Russell Wiggins, who by now was editor of the American. The media outcry and his sworn obligation to enforce federal law led U.S. Attorney Peter Mills to act. Mills put the Maine lottery on notice that it needed to refrain from using the mails and federally chartered banks if it wanted to stay out of trouble. In the midst of an historic transition in the Presidency, the Justice Department in Washington asked Mills to hold off and showed no interest in going after any state lotteries.

Neither Wiggins, his media allies nor Mills would take no for an answer, however, and continued to demand action.

Even when upper levels of the Justice Department assured bankers that none would be prosecuted while it reviewed the situation, a defiant Mills went on TV to say, “I know they’re going to have me on the carpet for it, but the fact is that the law is being broken and It’s my duty to pursue the matter.”

By the end of August, the pressure had garnered national attention, including a front page feature in The Wall Street Journal. Such interest along with unrelenting editorial demands from the Portland papers and Wiggins’ Ellsworth American supported further demands from Mills that not only Maine but other state lotteries stop using the federally chartered banks.

By the end of August U.S. Attorney General Wiliam Saxbe – finally responding to the snowballing pressure and not being able to find any loopholes within which the state lotteries could legally continue – told the lotteries he would indeed follow Mills’ lead and in effect shut them down unless Congress took action in 90 days to amend the law.

This gave rise to media attention in the other states where lotteries were operating. The lead headline in the nation’s most widely circulated paper the Daily News in New York, for example, proclaimed: “U.S. MAY HALT STATE LOTTERY,” when it ran with a story that New York’s own lottery could be in jeopardy by Saxbe’s ultimatum and the furor it recited had originated with Mills’ threatened actions in Maine.

Proposals to legitimize state lotteries in this era were by no means assured of enactment. After all, 37 of the 50 states did not have them. Members of Congress from these states including the South, where there were no state lotteries did not go along easily but eventually those with lotteries were given federal legitimacy.

After this, the rough sledding was by no means over. The next year, New York suspended its lottery for nine months due to an irregularity by which unsold tickets were being selected as winners

Today, 45 of the 50 states have lotteries with many combining efforts to support jackpots that sometimes surpass a billion dollars. Though in Maine and elsewhere lotteries take a back seat to income, sales, and property tax revenues, they have become, despite the labor pains of their modern origins a significant source of state revenues.

Paul H. Mills, son of the late US Attorney Peter Mills, is a Farmington attorney well known for his history and analyses of public affairs in Maine. He can be reached by e-mail: pmills@myfairpoint.net.