VictoryLand casino founder Milton McGregor, a charismatic and controversial force in Alabama politics for more than three decades, died Sunday at the age of 78.
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McGregor died “peacefully at home,” according to an email from Bill Cunningham, longtime spokesman for VictoryLand. A cause of death was not immediately available.
McGregor’s casino and dog track became an economic engine of Macon County, employing thousands of people and funding local charities, but his efforts to secure its political and legal standing led to conflicts inside and outside the Alabama Legislature that culminated in the Bingo Wars of 2008-2010, in which the administration of former Gov. Bob Riley tried to shut down gambling operations in and around Alabama.
McGregor was forced to close down VictoryLand during the fight, and later found himself on trial, accused of participating in a scheme to bribe legislators to pass gambling legislation that could have legalized the operation.
“They examined me closer than any person in this country has been examined, and they found nothing — because I’m clean,” McGregor told the Advertiser in 2014. “Make sure you put that in there, because by God, they put me and my family through hell. They listened to my wife reading my grandbabies Bible stories.”
McGregor was ultimately acquitted, but he struggled to keep VictoryLand open longer for more than a few days until the Bentley administration in 2015 declared a unilateral truce in the gambling fight. The casino finally reopened in 2016.
A short and stocky man with a deep voice and long mane of white hair, McGregor was an easily recognized presence in Alabama, whether in television ads for VictoryLand or in the State House. His dog track employed thousands of people, and his company said Sunday his businesses gave some $300 million to various causes in Alabama.
“‘You can be a winner, too,'” VictoryLand regular Elisabeth Vaughn said, quoting McGregor’s catchy commercial slogan.
Vaughn, an Opelika resident, was on the floor playing the machines Sunday. She began to cry after hearing news of McGregor’s passing in between games.
“It’s like my heart skipped a beat as if it was my own father. It made me think back, before they were closed, of all the things he did for people,” Vaughn said. “He’d send people free play money. He gave free gifts: Travel luggage, pots, pans, silverware, jewelry, robes. Females got housecoats. Your choice what color: pink or white. Then you’d get the house shoes the following week. That’s the kind of man he was, lovable and sharing.”
Equally floored by news of his death were legislators who had known McGregor throughout their political careers.
Rep. Pebblin Warren, D-Tuskegee, said she heard about McGregor’s death at around 8 a.m. Sunday.
Warren met McGregor about 30 years ago and said he had “the biggest heart of anybody.”
“Anybody at this point will be in shock. Not only in shock, but you’re hurt. Hurt from his loss but also hurt by what that man had to endure in the last seven to eight years,” Warren said. “The closing of VictoryLand was unjust. That should never have happened.”
McGregor was a major political player, giving campaigns as much as $650,000 a year at his height. That earned him the nickname “Uncle Miltie,” used affectionately by some and sarcastically by others.
But those who opposed him learned quickly that McGregor could counterpunch. Facing attacks from Riley’s Task Force on Illegal Gambling in 2009, McGregor — plugged into political intelligence and gossip around the state — had private investigators follow task force head David Barber to a casino in Mississippi, where they recorded him winning $2,300. Barber later resigned.
Sen. Bobby Singleton, D-Greensboro, called McGregor’s passing “a tremendous loss to the state.”
“Milton was a household name, not only in the gambling community, but in the economic development community with all his vast businesses around the state employing hundreds and thousands of Alabamians. He’s going to be missed,” Singleton said.
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Singleton, perhaps the state’s staunchest gambling supporter, said he last spoke to McGregor this past week.
“He’s a maverick. Someone who was never in a box who had his own individuality and allowed himself to be Milton. I’m truly going to miss him,” Singleton said.
From arcades to casinos
Born at the tail end of the Great Depression, McGregor was raised in Hartford in Geneva County. He spent time in the U.S. Army and studied at both Troy and Auburn universities, and worked for different companies before returning to Hartford in the late 1960s to care for his ailing mother and take over his family’s grocery business.
In the 1970s, McGregor became an early entrant in the video game business. He opened arcades in Dothan, Enterprise and Ozark and leased Pac-Man games to convenience stores around the Southeast.
In the early 1980s, McGregor put together a team of investors and local officials to win the rights to operate a dog track in Macon County. McGregor mortgaged all of his land — somewhere between $10 million and $12 million — to get the loans he needed, but when VictoryLand opened in 1984, it proved exceptionally lucrative.
“It was successful a lot faster than I ever dreamed,” McGregor said in 2014. “The experts told us we could expect $50 million per year, and I didn’t believe it. That first year, we were both wrong — we did $164 million. That was a pleasant surprise.”
Mississippi’s entry into the casino business in the 1990s began to affect revenues at dog tracks around the state. McGregor’s efforts to shore up his operations — first through video gaming and then electronic bingo — made him a major political donor and force in Alabama politics. He sometimes made more than $500,000 in donations to political campaigns in a year.
His power and notoriety led to accusations of undoing two Alabama governors.
In 1993, then-Gov. Guy Hunt, convicted and removed from office on ethics charges, accused McGregor of conspiring with Democratic and Republican allies of pushing to get him removed in part because of his opposition to gambling legislation.
McGregor said Hunt was “hallucinating.” The following year, news broke that Jim Folsom Jr., Hunt’s successor, had taken a family vacation to the Cayman Islands on McGregor’s plane. The ensuing controversy helped Republican nominee Fob James to a narrow win.
Bingo
The VictoryLand owner’s efforts to get video gaming were frustrated in six years of attempts. But by 2001, McGregor had hit on a new method to save VictoryLand: electronic bingo. McGregor got the idea after visiting the Poarch Band’s electronic bingo operation in 2001.
“The place was a dump, and they were doing good business,” McGregor said in 2014. “I told my attorneys, ‘If you did this in a nice location, with modern conveniences and a tasteful setup, it could be very popular.'”
The Alabama Constitution forbids gambling, but local amendments can carve out exceptions. Macon County voters authorized local bingo in 2003. Within a few years, McGregor had more than 6,000 machines at VictoryLand.
After operating for years under the protection of local constitutional amendments that allowed charity bingo, the Bob Riley administration — backed with a new Alabama Supreme Court ruling that severely limited what kinds of games could be played in Alabama — began a series of raids on gambling operations in the state in 2008, trying to cut down on the number of charity bingo games that had grown in recent years.
In early 2010, state officials made their first attempt to shut down VictoryLand. McGregor voluntarily closed it later that August to forestall a raid.
The raids and threats of raids threw thousands of people in Macon County out of work and affected charity operations in the area. McGregor backed legislation known as the “Sweet Home Alabama” bill that would have allowed voters to decide whether to keep gambling operations in the state open.
Unbeknownst to McGregor, the FBI had been investigating him, lawmakers and lobbyists since 2009. In the fall of 2010, McGregor and eight other defendants — including four former or current legislators and two major lobbyists — were arrested and charged with participating in a bribery scheme.
The resulting trials, featuring hours of wiretapped conversations between the defendants, showed the grubby and frequently vindictive pushing and shoving over policy-making in the state of Alabama. Lobbyists and politicians were often captured speaking about one another in belittling terms.
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But in the end, the wiretaps undid the prosecution, not McGregor. Former Sen. Scott Beason, R-Gardendale, who secretly recorded his colleagues, was caught on tape referring to black voters as “aborigines.” Other witnesses for the government proved belligerent on the stands. At one point in the 2012 trial, a prosecutor objected to her own witness’ testimony.
The 2011 trial ended with two acquittals and deadlocks on the charges against the other defendants, including McGregor. At the subsequent trial the following year, all the defendants were acquitted.
In a statement after the 2012 trial — which he said he drafted at 4 a.m. the day of the acquittal — McGregor said prosecutors “trampled on the Constitution they’ve sworn to defend.”
McGregor, however, struggled to reopen VictoryLand in the face of opposition from state officials. Attempts to start the facility up again almost inevitably ran into legal trouble. But in 2015, Gov. Robert Bentley and Attorney General Luther Strange said in separate announcements they would allow local officials to enforce gambling laws. With Macon County officials firmly in support of the casino, McGregor opened the doors in the fall of 2016. The 502 machines at reopening were quickly overrun with gamblers.
“It has been a long time coming, and I’m just happy the people stuck it out with us,” McGregor said. “We had a lot of trials in this, but I’m proud to be open, proud to be employing people in Macon County again, and I’m very proud to see the people still are behind us.”
‘Not a good day’
Sun glinted off the golden-mirrored Oasis hotel next to the casino Sunday, the early spring heat matching the palm trees out front.
Inside VictoryLand, regular customers digested the news of McGregor’s passing in the house that he built.
News of the casino magnate’s death hurt Montgomery resident Barbara Huffman, “because he had been through so much.”
Upstairs from the gaming machines, James Sanborn sat in the seats above the now-overgrown dog racing track. His eyes studied a simulcast of the Palm Beach Kennel Club races as he recalled his interactions with McGregor through three decades of dog betting.
“Very sincere. Very helpful. And very courteous. He did anything I ever asked him to do, any help as far as seating arrangement or anything. He’d make sure I was helped and he was pretty much that way with anybody,” Sanborn said.
Sanborn built a living off dog races at VictoryLand, first visiting the track in August 1985 and going nearly seven days a week until the track was shut down in 2010.
“Now it’s more like twice a week,” Sanborn said.
Sanborn had been 47 miles from his home in Columbus, Georgia, and en route to the casino when he got two calls about McGregor passing: one from a fellow VictoryLand regular and one from a lobbyist.
“It’s not a good day or a good thing to hear,” Sanborn said. “All I know is Milton was a very good soul.”
Those that visit VictoryLand still have a sense of optimism that it will return to its former stature. Once outfitted with 6,400 machines and a five-star restaurant, it was “as good as Las Vegas,” Sanborn said.
McGregor was part of that winning culture. When he wasn’t caught up in the management side of things, he was greeting people with a smile that was a door prize for anybody.
“Now I’m wondering about the future. How things are going to go on. What their outcome is going to be and if anything is going to change,” Sanborn said.
Visitation for McGregor will start at noon Wednesday at Frazer Memorial United Methodist Church in Montgomery, followed by the funeral at 2 p.m.
McGregor is survived by his wife Patricia; two daughters, Kim McGregor and Cindy Benefield; and seven grandchildren.
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