There are few issues where the Volunteer State’s Bible-belt roots show more clearly than the launch of the lottery.

In 2002, Tennessee was one of only three states in the country without one. A statewide lottery referendum was on the ballot that year, the culmination of a 20-year battle led by a Memphis Democratic lawmaker. And polling showed anti-lottery sentiment gaining momentum as it got closer to Election Day.

Some major religious leaders railed against gambling and the further decline of morality. Others predicted scratch-off tickets would spark a dangerous addiction in people with low incomes.

But, on Nov. 5, 2002, the lottery prevailed with a slim majority as 53% of Tennesseans who turned out voted yes. The legislature the next year passed the bills needed to create it, and the first Tennessee Lottery tickets were sold Jan. 20, 2004.

In this 20th anniversary year, many conservatives who first opposed the lottery are amazed at its success.

More than $7.2 billion raised. More than two million college/trade school scholarships awarded. Consistent revenue growth year to year, a rarity for most state lotteries. In part because of its success, in 2014, then-Gov. Bill Haslam pushed through the creation of the Tennessee Promise program to provide free community college to every Tennessean. Lottery reserves were used to establish the endowment to pay for it.

Among the converts is state Rep. Susan Lynn, R-Mt. Juliet, who in 2002 voted against the lottery referendum because she believed gambling to be immoral and against her Christian values.

Lynn now is a vocal supporter of the lottery.

“We have a good and well respected program in Tennessee,” she said. “Students in Tennessee who qualify and need a scholarship will get a scholarship, and we can all be happy about that.”

Perhaps the person happiest about the Tennessee Lottery is now U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, the aforementioned Memphis Democrat who pushed hardest to create it when he served in the Tennessee General Assembly.

“Nothing in my legislative career will ever top the ongoing positive effect of passing legislation to amend the Tennessee constitution to permit a state lottery,” Cohen wrote in a 2022 opinion column for the USA TODAY Network-Tennessee, “to enact a Lottery, and the creation of the Tennessee HOPE Lottery Scholarships.”

This year, in a column to mark the anniversary, Cohen said the lottery has had a “monumental impact” on Tennesseans.

Much of the lottery’s success can be attributed to the hard-driving gambling industry veteran Rebecca Paul, 75, Tennessee Lottery’s CEO since its inception. Paul at times has been polarizing figure once described by The New York Times as “the highflying impresario of legalized gambling.”

Paul, a one-time Miss America pageant finalist and TV weathercaster, also launched lotteries in Florida and Georgia, and critics have accused her now and then of being a spotlight grabber.

Even Cohen, who initially called her the Michael Jordan of lottery execs, told the New York Times five years later that Paul “is just a bigger-than-life personality, an Ethel Merman, P. T. Barnum. She has spent her life on stage, strutting and showing off to an audience. But it’s just flair.”

Her high-power Nashville confidants reject that characterization.

“She’s an amazing executive,” said Deb McDermott, a national TV media company CEO based in Nashville for more than 30 years.

“Rebecca’s got an amazing marketing mind. I met two or three of lottery people at a convention who were glued to her, wanting to know what she’s doing. They were mesmerized by her advice and her ideas.”

Paul shrugs off critics, telling anyone who’ll listen that she loves raising money for Tennesseans to go to college.

“I work hard, I’m proud of what I do, I enjoy what I do, and I feel good about how much money we raise for students of Tennessee,” she said.

“My favorite days are when someone stops me at the grocery store and says — I want to say thank you; because of you, my son, my daughter, my granddaughter is the first in our family to go to college.”

Reach Brad Schmitt at brad@tennessean.com or 615-259-8384.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Tennessee Lottery: A look back at highs and lows in its 20th year