Lumbee Tribe Chairman Says North Carolina Casino Plans Are Dead After Vote
The Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina voted Tuesday against a constitutional amendment that would have cleared the path for a casino along Interstate 95 in Robeson County.
The vote delivered a decisive rebuke to the tribal leadership that had staked its economic development agenda on the outcome. About 63% of voters opposed the measure, with nearly 10,000 enrolled tribal members casting ballots across 21 precincts and through absentee voting.
Tribal Chairman John Lowery said in a statement Tuesday night that the vote “ensures we will not move forward with gaming,” and that he will not bring the issue forward again during the remaining 18 months of his term. The casino project, which had been billed as a potential economic transformation for one of North Carolina’s most economically distressed regions, is effectively dead for the foreseeable future.
The vote ends the discussion on a new casino for now, but the vote was not primarily about a casino.
A Vote More About Tribal Power Dynamics Than a New Casino
The framing around Tuesday’s election obscured a governance question that proved more consequential than the gaming question itself. The existing Lumbee constitution already permits gaming, provided it is approved by a referendum requiring at least 30% of all eligible tribal voters to participate. The amendment on Tuesday’s ballot would have removed that requirement, transferring authority to approve gaming compacts, regulate gaming activities, and nominate members to gaming commissions to the tribal chairman and Tribal Council instead. This proposed power shift may have ultimately sunk the prospects of a new casino.
Opponents argued that this was not a vote on whether to have a casino. It was a vote on whether to give the chairman and council the unilateral power to pursue one. Lumbees United for Accountability, the primary opposition campaign, argued that the amendment concentrated power among tribal leaders and undermined the democracy built into the existing constitution by removing the referendum mechanism tribal members already had.
One prominent opponent, who helped draft the original Lumbee constitution, described the amendment as treating the tribal governing document as a vehicle for an economic enterprise rather than a foundational statement of self-governance.
Lowery had framed the vote in binary terms, saying publicly that if the amendment passed, the tribe would pursue gaming, and if it did not pass, the tribe would not. That framing, as several opponents noted, was not technically accurate given the existing constitution’s gaming pathway, but it shaped how many voters understood the stakes. The chairman’s decision to tie the casino project’s fate entirely to the governance amendment created the conditions for its defeat: tribal members who supported gaming in principle but opposed consolidating authority had no clear way to vote yes on the casino and no on the power transfer.
The Economic Impact in Robeson County Could be Massive for a Struggling County
The case for the casino had genuine weight in a region that sorely needed it. Robeson County’s median household income of $42,180 is the lowest among North Carolina’s 100 counties. Its per-capita tax base is the smallest, and its unemployment rate is among the state’s highest. The county’s population shrank 8% over the last decade, even as North Carolina’s overall population grew 11%.
Advocates for the amendment said a casino would create around 3,000 jobs and allow the tribe to invest in education, health care, housing, and public safety. Lowery had told the Tribal Council to imagine what the tribe could do with a $540 million budget. The tribe received full federal recognition only in December, making this the first opportunity in the Lumbees’ more than 130-year pursuit of recognition to access the gaming rights on which other federally recognized tribes have built their economic foundations.
The urgency argument was also real, as time may be against the Lumbee. South Carolina has been considering allowing commercial casinos along I-95, including locations near Dillon and Marlboro counties, which border North Carolina. A South Carolina casino on the I-95 corridor would directly compete with any future Lumbee development for the same traveler market. Lowery cited this competitive pressure repeatedly in the run-up to the vote.
New Leadership Will Mean a New Opportunity to Make a Decision for Lumbee Land
The opposition’s argument ultimately won on the merits of the constitutional question rather than the economic one. Tribal leadership was willing to pursue gaming only if the governance structure gave them the authority to move without a broader membership referendum. The membership declined to grant that authority. The two positions were incompatible, and Lowery’s decision to treat them as a single up-or-down question produced the only outcome that decision made possible.
The vote does not permanently close the door on a casino on the newly acquired Lumbee territory. The existing constitution’s gaming pathway, requiring a referendum with 30% voter participation, remains available to any future tribal leadership willing to use it. Whether a future chairman attempts that path, or whether the 241 acres of I-95 land the tribe purchased for $6 million gets developed for an industrial park instead, will depend on who leads the tribe after Lowery’s term ends in roughly 18 months.
For now, the Lumbee have 241 acres at an I-95 interchange, federal recognition they fought more than a century to achieve, and a vote that said more about how they want to govern themselves than about whether they want a casino right now.
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