Lindsey Graham and Jay Bender are poles apart on the Catawba Indian Nation's request for federal rather than state authority over a proposed bingo operation in Santee.

But the U.S. senator and the Catawbas' attorney agree that if Congress doesn't approve it, the tribe is likely to file a lawsuit against the state of South Carolina or get into the video poker business.

In related developments reported by The Associated Press:

-- House Speaker David Wilkins, R-Greenville, said a decision "regarding the expansion of gambling in South Carolina is for the state -- and not the federal government -- to make."

-- Gov. Mark Sanford's spokesman, Will Folks, agreed the Catawbas "need to make their case to the General Assembly" and not go "over the state's head."

-- Graham said he's listening: "I am not going to vote for any federal statute until there's a consensus at home as to what is the best course to deal with the Indian gaming problem."

-- The president of the South Carolina Baptist Convention, the Rev. Hal Lane, an Orangeburg native who was pastor of First Baptist Church of Eutawville from 1978 to 1989, said he was worried that networked video bingo machines will just be a new form of video gambling that would "guarantee more gambling addictions, bankruptcies, destruction of families and an exponential leap in all social ills that proliferate in a culture of greed."

The Catawba Indian Nation "was a sovereign society before the first European arrived and it was treated as sovereign by every successive government," Bender said in an interview Wednesday.

"The state participated in the theft of the tribe's land in 1840," he said. "It was an act of fraud" that led, eventually, to a 1993 settlement with the state that allows the tribe to operate two bingo halls.

"The whole reason bingo was in the settlement agreement was to provide the tribe with a stream of income to allow it to survive economically and ... repay the state" for its monetary contribution to the settlement, Bender added.

But when the state launched its lottery, it became the tribe's biggest competitor as well as its chief regulator, he said. Tribal bingo revenues fell nearly 60 percent.

"If the state is going to continue to devastate the tribe's economic development activity, the tribe has to do something. It's entitled to survive," he said.

"The tribe's preference is to have (federal) Indian Gaming Regulatory Act authority for a bingo facility at Santee. That's our first choice, second choice and third choice," Bender said.

"The state benefits by getting a cap on the type of gaming that could be offered by the tribe and by the jobs and economic benefit of locating the facility at Santee," he said.

"But if that effort is thwarted by the actions of the state, then the tribe has to consider the other options it has available to it to protect its economic survival," he said.

One option is a lawsuit "against the state to seek redress for injury to the tribe because of what appears to be a breach by the state of the 1993 settlement agreement," Bender said.

The breach, he said, was the state's creation of its lottery.

A second option, Bender said, is to offer video poker on its reservation lands.

"The tribe right now has the authority under the 1993 settlement act to have video poker on its reservation in York County. For a variety of reasons it has chosen not to do that," Bender said.

"But if the tribe has its back against the wall, in terms of economic survival, it's going to take every opportunity it has, even if those opportunities are less desirable to the tribe than the one we're pushing for (the Santee operation)."

According to broadcast reports, the governor said the act does not allow the Catawbas to operate video poker now that the games are illegal in South Carolina. The act states: "The tribe may permit on its reservation video poker or similar electronic play devices to the same extent that the devices are authorized by state law.''

Although Congress will decide on the IGRA request, "it seems to me the hold-up right now is the governor," Bender said.

Critics frequently express concerns that the Catawbas' Santee operation could become a casino. Spokespersons for the Catawbas continually refute those concerns.

"We're not asking to put a casino on the shores of Lake Marion," Bender said. "I can't say that it would never happen, but I don't anticipate it would happen in my lifetime or in the lifetime of anybody I know."

Class 2 status under IGRA would allow the Catawbas to offer higher jackpots, operate around the clock and network with other Indian gaming operations.

But in order to operate a casino, the Catawbas would have to upgrade to Class 3 status as well as obtain state approval.

"The state would control entirely the possibility of casino gaming," Bender said. "The current federal law prohibits casino gaming on reservations unless the state in which the reservation is located agrees to allow it."

Bender said critics raise a lot of side issues "trying to deflect attention from the real issue, which is that the people who seem opposed to the Santee project seem to be from somewhere else and they all seem to have jobs."

And he said the public discourse about the Santee bingo operation has been tinged with racism at times. Some people, he said, haven't gotten beyond "the movie stereotypes of Indians."

T&D Staff Writer Lee Hendren can be reached by e-mail at lhendren@timesanddemocrat.com or by phone at 803-533-5552.

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