The Myrtle Beach People’s Rally against bringing gambling to the South Carolina resort town recently was held over the weekend at Pelicans Stadium. Organizer David Hucks said the “old time tent rally” brought thousands of people together to fight against “a .4 million push to get hotel casino gambling in our town. This will permanently change the culture of our city and even impact our state. Myrtle Beach has been a family town. The last thing we want to do is to become a gambling town.”
Hucks was referring to South Carolina state Rep. Todd Rutherford’s announcement that he plans to introduce a bill in the next legislative session that would allow upscale casinos on the Grand Strand, with tax revenue going toward road and bridge construction and maintenance. Rutherford, House Minority Leader noted 80 percent of Democratic voters in the June primary election supported a ballot question asking if they approved changing gaming laws to fund state roads.
Rutherford’s bill would require approval by a two-thirds vote in both chambers of the legislature to be placed on the November 2016 ballot. If voters approved the measure, lawmakers would have to vote to approve it a second time before it would become law.
Myrtle Beach Mayor John Rhodes said he doubts Rutherford’s bill will make it out of the legislature. “I don’t see big-time casinos getting through Columbia. It’s like me walking out here and making a prediction that I’m going to win the lottery. I don’t see anything realistic on that any time soon. It’s been tried before and it’s failed before.”
Myrtle Beach Councilman Randal Wallace noted, “I don’t think that gambling is the panacea they think it is. Any time you’ve got gambling going on you’re going to have people fighting it. When we had video poker here, it was a never-ending fight.” Video poker machines were legal in South Carolina before being outlawed by the state Supreme Court in 1999.
Gambling is available on the Grand Strand through the Big M Casino Cruise boat, which operates out of Little River and takes gamblers into international waters. Its sister ship, the SunCruz casino boat, recently ceased operations. Earlier this year the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled against the Catawba Indian Nation’s proposed casino on its reservation in York County. The state’s only federally recognized Native American tribe is pursuing a casino on land it owns in North Carolina.
