Luck of the draw: Charles Sanders knows a doc can't always pick his patients.

• Author: Gray, Tim
• Position: Cover story

The doctor was probing, trying to determine the extent of the injury. How bad was it, Charles Sanders asked Kevin Geddings, a public-relations consultant and member of the N.C. Education Lottery Commission, which Sanders chairs. Before moving to Charlotte, Geddings had helped start the South Carolina lottery and befriended a lobbyist for Scientific Games Corp., which operates the gaming there and wanted to run the new lottery here. His ties to a company vying for a multimillion-dollar contract had critics howling.

In late October, Geddings called Sanders at his office in Chapel Hill to discuss the controversy. "He said, 'If this is an embarrassment to you, I'll resign.'" Sanders, a cardiologist-turned-CEO who retired from Glaxo to run for U.S. Senate a decade ago, gave his prognosis. "And I said, 'Kevin, if that's all there is to it, a friendship, I think we can get by that. But if there's another shoe to drop, we've got a problem.' And he was like, 'Mr. Chairman, there's no other shoe to drop, I promise you.'

"Three or four days later, the news came out that he'd made $25,000 from Scientific Games."

Though he had opposed the lottery, even contributing money to the campaign against it, Sanders says this was the only time he had serious misgivings about agreeing to chair the commission. "He just flat lied," Sanders says--and Geddings denies--"and I've never had anybody do that to me that smoothly."

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Sanders hates surprises. He's had plenty since the legislature, with last-minute arm twisting and parliamentary shenanigans, passed the lottery last summer and Gov. Mike Easley, in a cunning bit of political jujitsu, asked him to head the nine-member panel overseeing it. Since then, three members--including Geddings--have resigned, and investigators are probing the role a key adviser to House Speaker Jim Black played in getting the lottery passed. According to published reports, Meredith Norris set up dinners for Scientific Games executives with lawmakers and even arranged for the company to suggest language that was written into the legislation. She was not registered as a company lobbyist.

The stakes are high, with the games expected to rake in $1.2 billion next fiscal year and the $425 million profit earmarked for education. But long before the first scratch ticket is sold--that won't be until March 30--the lottery had gained an unpleasant odor that, like strange perfume and stale cigarette smoke, has a way of clinging to those who get too close. "It's looked bad and smelled bad," says Raleigh lawyer Dan Blue, an opponent and former speaker of the state House, "and you get the feeling that the stench hasn't subsided."

Sanders, at age 73, understands the risks. "My integrity is very important to me, and I do not like to have it impugned." So he's approaching the job the way he'd treat a diseased heart--dispassionately diagnosing, prescribing and pushing ahead to the next problem, nurturing something he would rather not have seen come into being. But, as he learned long ago, a doctor can't always pick his patients.

"This isn't a job I aspired to," he says. "I'm doing this as a public service."

As far back as anybody can recall, he'd always said he wanted to be a doctor. "Every-body called him 'Doc' in high school, even our father," says Barefoot Sanders a federal judge in their hometown of Dallas. The main religion in the Sanders household was achievement, and his parents--his dad, a lawyer; his mother, a homemaker--expected their children to excel. That drive marked him throughout his career, and even today as a rich retiree, he'd rather work, serving on about a dozen boards, than...