With the general election just two weeks away, the four referendum questions on the state ballot are getting almost as much attention as the governor's race.
And among those four, the one seeking the repeal of the state's Casino Gambling Law seems to have gathered the most intense group of supporters.
Repeal the Casino Deal, the statewide grassroots, anti-gaming group, has been doing its best to convince voters that the 2011 bill providing for three casinos and one slots parlor should be reversed.
With all the fits and starts associated with the casino-licensing process -- including conflict-of-interest concerns and questions of partners with criminal records -- the odds of this question succeeding seemed favorable.
But that initial anti-casino momentum has slowed, as recent polls suggest. Surveys by the Boston Globe, Suffolk University/Boston Herald, UMass Lowell/7News, and WBUR all show the referendum question trailing by double digits.
Now anti-casino backers have disclosed a report that predicts the state's Lottery revenue will fall by as much as $104 million -- $830,000 in Fitchburg -- in just the first year of the three casinos' and one slots parlor's operation.
The only other support for such a devastating effect on the Lottery, according to the Globe, was a report filed in 2008 by state Rep. Tom Conroy, a treasurer candidate and casino foe, who alluded to a 2006 paper written by a Pennsylvania college student, which predicted a 25 percent drop in that state's lottery revenue once casinos began operating there.