MINOT — Gambling in North Dakota has become a multi-billion dollar industry, and I’m not talking about the traditional casinos in tribal communities. I’m talking about charitable gaming that’s exploded in places like bars and gas stations around the state thanks to the state legislature’s legalization of electronic pull-tab machines, which are nearly indistinguishable from slot machines as a practical matter of function.

It’s creating some genuinely bizarre outcomes. As I reported a year ago, charitable organizations like hockey clubs and disability advocates are

engaged in a land rush,

buying up bars and restaurants to protect turf for their pull tab machines.

According to a recent report by KX News,

Development Homes Inc., which provides support services to the disabled, “recently opened a bakery and gaming lounge in Grand Forks.”

A gaming lounge? That’s a casino, my friends. Maybe not with the leisure-suits-and-cocktails aesthetic we’ve come to expect from places like Las Vegas and Atlantic City, but it meets the Oxford English Dictionary definition of a casino, which is “a public room or building where gambling games are played.”

Gambling is legal in North Dakota, without any real debate about whether it ought to be, and we haven’t yet seen the cultural ramifications from that. Last year, a bar owner told me his employees were routinely cashing out around $40,000 from gambling over a typical weekend. We’re talking about a town with fewer than 1,000 residents located an hour from the nearest population center. Where is that money coming from? And can the people who are spending it on gambling afford to lose it?

Meanwhile, gambling interests are pushing hard against state efforts to rein them in. This street fight will be one of the most critical policy debates in the next legislative session.

One front in the battle will be over who regulates gaming in North Dakota. Attorney General Drew Wrigley has taken a hard line since taking office in February 2022. Last year, Wrigley’s office fined one of the state’s largest gambling industry players for starting a charity and using it to circumvent state laws. Mandan-based businessman David Wisdom and his immediate family members

were forced to resign from his businesses

and pay over $160,000 in fines and legal fees.

In January, state lawmakers are expected to take up a bill removing the regulatory authority for charitable gaming from Wrigley’s office.

Rep. Jim Kasper, a Fargo Republican elected to another term last month in part thanks to a $15,000 campaign contribution from Wisdom, is one possible source for this legislative push. Another is Rep. Mike Motschenbacher, a Bismarck Republican who, while in session, is

paid both as a lawmaker and as executive director of the North Dakota Gaming Alliance,

a lobbying group.

But the face of this push isn’t likely to be the gambling industry goon squad. It’ll be the charities—the hockey clubs and veterans groups—that are more sympathetic in the public’s eyes.

These organizations should be cautious. They need to ask themselves how much longer the gambling interests will need them. As North Dakotans grow increasingly comfortable with gambling in their communities, there may come a point when the for-profit gambling businesses no longer need the charities as a fig leaf for their operations.