Don Siegelman defeated Fob James in the 1998 governor’s race by a landslide 18-point margin. Siegelman ran on an overt platform favoring a state lottery for Alabama. He patterned his campaign and lottery issue after Georgia Gov. Zell Miller’s plan.

Georgia earmarked their lottery for education and called it the Hope Scholarship Program. Under Miller’s Georgia plan any deserving Georgia high school graduate with at least a “B” average could go to any Georgia college tuition free with proceeds from the Georgia lottery. It was working in Georgia, so Siegelman sold it all over Alabama. He perceived that his lottery issue had propelled him into the governor’s office. He should have remembered the initial poll he saw in 1996 showing Fob James was so unpopular that anybody could have beaten him. George Wallace had lived by the adage that more people vote against someone that for someone. The people were not as much in favor of Siegelman’s lottery as they were against Fob.