Sand, Steel, and Slots: Gambling on the Postindustrial City in East Chicago, Indiana, in the 1990s

In 1980, the economic throes of deindustrialization struck the Calumet Region, as one resident described, like a “heart attack.” The abrupt closure of Wisconsin Steel on the Southeast Side of Chicago signaled the gradual decline of the steel industry, which had been the economic backbone of the bi-state region for the entire century. While steel slowly shuttered on the Illinois side, it continued in the communities of Northwest Indiana – albeit with a drastically reduced workforce amid mill modernization. In the early 1990s, population loss and the closure of smaller industrial sites led East Chicago and its industrial neighbors, Gary and Hammond, to turn to a long-illegal source of revenue: gambling. These cities lobbied the state government to legalize lakefront gambling, which happened in 1994. This decision to become a town of sand, steel, and slots offered East Chicago a potential way to reconceptualize its identity amid the wave of deindustrialization while preserving its cherished form of governance – as a Democratic-controlled political machine city. The city’s longtime mayor saw in the potential casino industry a way to preserve not only the city’s budget, but the budget lines that allowed his governing coalition to stay in office: a healthy workforce that rested on patronage. The push for legalized lakefront gambling became contested, not only on the moral grounds around gambling, but also on the allegations of corruption that surrounded it. Ultimately, this paper will sketch the economic crisis of the 1980s for the Calumet Region, specifically East Chicago. It will then turn to discussing the decision to push for legalized gambling. The paper argues that the solution to its postindustrial future became intertwined with its desire to endure as a politically machine-operated municipality, too. In East Chicago, the crisis of postindustrialism offered a new way to reconceptualize the political machine.