The struggle to legalize online and casino gambling in Texas has been ongoing for more than a decade and spearheading this fight is State Senator Carol Alvarado (D-Houston).
According to NBC 5 News, Alvarado filed legislation in 2009 that seeks to leave the issue to voters to decide since expanding gambling would require amending the constitution, which a majority of Texas voters must approve.
In 2021, Alvarado and Representative John Kuempel, (R-Seguin) partnered to bring bills that would legalize gambling in Texas before state lawmakers. None of the bills made it over their first hurdle.
According to The Dallas Morning News, lawmakers lost the political appetite to pass the bills after they learned that the holes they hoped to fill with gambling revenue would be shallower than they initially expected.
Following the 2021 defeat, Alvarado said she was more optimistic than she had ever been.
“We’ve known all this is a long-term attempt,” Alvarado told The Dallas Morning News.
Alvarado and Kuempel will need a two-third vote of lawmakers and the support of a majority of voters for the bills to become law because the Texas Constitution bans most forms of gambling.
“I think we’d keep that money at home. My views would be putting it towards property tax relief, infrastructure, public education, things like that,” Kuempel said in regards to Texans traveling out of state to do their gambling.
Rob Kohler, an opponent of legalizing gambling, told NBC 5 News that he does not see the “landscape” changing. Kohler, a consultant, and lobbyist for the Christian Life Commission, the policy arm of the Texas Baptists, said he has been on the issue for 20 years.
“It is not economic development,” Kohler said. “It is not something you can build off of and grow a community around. It destroys communities.”
However, Kuempel vowed in 2021 that he would try again in 2023 if he was reelected.