2024 is the 50th anniversary of some momentous public developments, including the climax of the Nixon Watergate scandal – the only  impeachment inquiry to lead to a presidential resignation – and the election of Lewiston’s Jim Longley, the first independent state governor elected anywhere in America in 40 years.

That same year, Maine burst onto the national gaming scene – a few weeks after the state sold its first lottery tickets in 141 years. (The very first winner was Lewiston mechanic Ivan Lazure, who won a $20 jackpot.) While 10 states before Maine had gone into the lottery business, Maine’s venture into government gambling was accompanied by more national drama than the others. But first, let’s take a look at its intriguing antecedents.

Though in 1963 New Hampshire became the first state in modern memory to enact a state lottery, they were once a common staple of government finance. In 1776, the First Continental Congress established a lottery to help fund the War of Independence against Britain.

Some state and local governments followed suit. Maine was among these when, in 1821, the Legislature authorized a lottery to raise money to help build the Cumberland and Oxford Canal in southwestern Maine.

Americans began to reevaluate the wisdom of lotteries when their proliferation made oversight a challenge and abuses began to emerge. Maine-based religious publications – ever an influence in 19th-century culture – crusaded against them. Zion’s Advocate, a Baptist paper, and the Congregational Christian Mirror were among these. And so, in 1833, the Maine Legislature and Gov. Smith of Wiscasset put an end to them. Nearly all other states in this era also put on the brakes.

The post-Civil War generation saw Louisiana hosting a revival. Scandals were associated with perceived widespread bribery of state and even federal legislators. These, along with the persistent exhortation of anti-gambling reformers, led to the passage in that decade of federal legislation that outlawed the use of the mails in the distribution of lottery tickets. Enforcement of this law shut down Louisiana’s initiative, the only remaining lottery, in 1894.

The federal interest in tamping down on lotteries was reiterated in 1934 when Congress, as part of the Federal Communications Act, told radio stations they could not broadcast the outcomes of lottery sweepstakes.

The supposed grip of federal law was tightened in 1968 by passage of a law that barred federally chartered banks from handling lottery funds. It was, ironically, a law some New York-based banks had sought as a way out of their being forced into becoming part of lottery financial processing.

By the time Maine entered the field in June of 1974, it became the 11th state to do so, following in the footsteps of all other New England states except Vermont.

Soon after several Maine newspapers – including the Maine Times, the Ellsworth American and three Portland newspapers (the Press Herald, Evening Express and Sunday Telegram) – gave prominent attention to the various federal laws the lottery was not observing. This crusade was led in part by former Washington Post editor and onetime United Nations ambassador Russell Wiggins, who by now was editor of the American. The media outcry and his sworn obligation to enforce federal law led U.S. Attorney Peter Mills to act. Mills put the Maine lottery on notice that it needed to refrain from using the mails and federally chartered banks if it wanted to stay out of trouble. In the midst of a historic transition in the presidency, the Justice Department in Washington asked Mills to hold off and showed no interest in going after any state lotteries.

Neither Wiggins, his media allies nor Mills would take no for an answer, however, and they continued to demand action.

By the end of August, the pressure had garnered national attention, including a front page feature in The Wall Street Journal. Such interest, along with unrelenting editorial demands from the Portland papers and Wiggins’ Ellsworth American, supported further demands from Mills that not only Maine but other state lotteries stop using the federally chartered banks.

By the end of August, U.S. Attorney General William Saxbe – finally responding to the snowballing  pressure and not being able to find any loopholes within which the state lotteries could legally continue – told the lotteries he would indeed follow Mills’ lead and in effect shut them down unless Congress took action in 90 days to amend the law.

This gave rise to media attention in the other states where lotteries were operating.  The lead headline in the nation’s most widely circulated paper, the Daily News in New York, for example, proclaimed: “U.S. MAY HALT STATE LOTTERY” when it ran with a story that New York’s  own lottery could be in jeopardy by Saxbe’s ultimatum and the furor it recited had originated with Mills’ threatened actions in Maine.

Today, 45 of the 50 states have lotteries, with many combining efforts to support jackpots that sometimes surpass a billion dollars. Though in Maine and elsewhere lotteries take a backseat to income, sales and property tax revenues, they have become, despite the labor pains of their modern origins, a significant source of state revenues.