Tennessee Election Results: Mayor With Alleged Gambling Ties Wins

The Republican primary for the Gubernatorial nomination had its share of dirt being slung by the candidates. At one point, Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam and U.S. Representative Zack Wamp threw allegations at each other involving ties to gambling interests.

On Thursday, the two men went to battle in the polls and Haslam came out the winner when the Tennessee election results were final. Haslam will be the Republican candidate to become the next governor of Tennessee.

As the election neared and the calendar turned to June, Wamp took the first shot. The Wamp camp sent out a press release in which the candidate questioned that Haslam's family had an interest in gambling. The family owns Haslam's Pilot Travel Centers in several states where casino gambling is legal. Wamp suggested that a partnership may have been formed between the business and gambling interests.

Haslam immediately denied the allegation and proceeded to do some accusing of his own. The Haslam campaign alleged that Wamp took contributions from the Cherokee Nation Business Political Action Committee. The Committee openly represents gambling interests at Indian casinos.

Whether the gambling allegations were true or not did not matter to voters on Thursday. Haslam won fifty percent of the Republican primary vote.Wamp finished in second place, twenty percentage points behind Haslam. Lt. Governor Ron Ramsey finished in third with twenty-two percent of the votes. Ramsey was hurt by the perception of lawmakers currently in office.

Tennessee is just one of many states that will be holding primaries leading up to the mid-term elections in November. In a majority of the states, the gambling issue will be key to which candidate comes out on top.

In recent years a casino boom has taken place across the US, and the importance of the issue may be seen most in the Alabama governor race. Candidates have drawn lines in the sand along party lines on the gambling issue, with Republicans looking to keep the status quo, and Democratic front runner Ron Sparks hoping to regulate gambling in the state.

August 6, 2010
Posted By April Gardner
Staff Editor, CasinoGamblingWeb.com
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