James Carville talks about why he keeps going back to the track

New Orleans

It was hard to miss that face. We got to know it so well 30 years ago, when he was the brains behind the campaign that got Bill Clinton elected President.

That face is 77 now, but it has not changed much. The last 30 years look like they have been kind to James Carville. He does not just look like a good time. He is the good time. He wears his allegiance to his alma mater LSU on his sleeve. Actually both sleeves and a camouflage-style sweatshirt inside the fourth-floor dining room at the Fair Grounds clubhouse last weekend.

When he was not smiling, it seemed he was laughing as he sat with lunchtime companions who included trainer Chad Brown and horse owner Peter Brant.

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Talk about traveling in tall cotton. That party would not be made to wait long for the best table in any house, especially in New Orleans. With all due respect to the duly elected LaToya Cantrell, Carville is forever the mayor wherever he goes in these parts.

If there is anything he loves every bit as his beloved Tigers, it is gambling. He has long been a weekly autumn guest on “The Tony Kornheiser Show.” He is not there to talk politics. Just to talk about his football picks.

“I came back pretty strong at the end,” he said, rallying from more losses than wins early in the season. “I had a great Super Bowl. I had Cincinnati (plus 4 1/2 points) and the under (48 1/2).”

They both hit. Now that football season is over, the racetrack calls Carville. It was between races on Saturday’s Risen Star card when he took time to do an interview for Horse Racing Nation’s Ron Flatter Racing Pod.

HRN: As we are sitting here, we just watched a race, and you had a horse that was a big long shot. If the race only ended about 100 yards earlier, right?

Carville: Yeah, it actually wasn’t that big a long shot, but it was in good position, and I thought it was going to do well. But that ‘5’ horse came home good. It’s not the first time. I’m not a virgin here.

HRN: Welcome to the races, right? How long have you been coming here?

Carville: Sixty years.

HRN: How has it changed? How has the game changed as you have tried to play it?

Carville: People used to come to the racetrack, and you had these stoopers. These guys that would go and try to pick up tickets hoping that they’d find one. All kind of characters. Now it’s just the nature of things. It’s not as personal at the old Fair Grounds, which I think was one of the great sports venues of kind anywhere in the country. And, you know, they’ve got this antiseptic thing here, but the racing surface is good, and this card today is a really good. It’s one of the better cards I’ve seen. Everything is good.

HRN: This Risen Star card has big fields. Do you bet every day, or do you bet every weekend?

Carville: I do a lot of ‘cows’ (group bets) with other people. We get together and generally bet the big races or cards on the days of the big races. I’m not that much of a horse degenerate.

HRN: But are you enough of one to tell me how you can bet here at Fair Grounds that might be different from other tracks? Are there certain idiosyncrasies about this place?

Carville: I’ve always been told to favor stretch runners, because we have a really long stretch here. We were talking about this with Chad. The thing about his track is a lot of trainers like to run their horses here, because we have something down here called river sand. It can’t be replicated. It takes sediment from the river. It’s very easy on the horses’ legs.

HRN: Do you look maybe more for a particular style of horse on that basis?

Carville: I used to have a system like most systems. I tried to figure out what the last quarter was in the last race and weigh that in favor. There was a friend of mine who was named Chuck Kelly? We used to call them a Chuck Kelly horse.

HRN: A Chuck Kelly horse?

Carville: Yeah, you try to figure out the last quarter here, because I think we have one of the longest stretches in the country. I think there’s a slight bias to stretch runners. A lot of people don’t like inside horses. I don’t know what the fact about that is.

HRN: Do you have a particular set of forms or guides or paperwork that you like to look at?

Carville: Yeah. Michael Beychok (the winner of the 2012 National Horseplayers Championship and a business associate of Carville). If you call him, he gives you his best shot. He’s not a guy who’s got a secret horse and says, ‘Don’t tell anybody about this one.’”

HRN: That’s right. He puts them in the newspaper.

Carville: He puts them in the paper every day.

HRN: “’Chok’s choices.”

Carville: Literally, if I bet on 10 of his horses, eight will be somewhere around (as contenders). Eight are not going to win, all right? But very seldom do you see a horse (of his) that doesn’t run in the top four. That’s all you could ask for. and that’s all you could ask for. That’s all a bettor can ask for. You’ve got something live.

HRN: You’re a sports bettor, too. We know from listening to you on “The Tony Kornheiser Show.” We also know you had a guy on there named T-Boy Lachelais. Tell me about T-Boy Lachelais. And is there a horse-racing equivalent for you?

Carville: T-Boy lives in a boat back in the Chapel Island Basin (in Virginia). He’s my age, and he’s never been to the dentist. He gives his son the teams to give to me.

HRN: Is he real?

Carville: Well, who’s to say what’s real and not real? OK? I don’t judge. Is Santa Claus real? You don’t know he’s not.

HRN: So he’s like a muse. Whether he’s real not, he’s like a gambler’s muse.

Carville: Maybe, you know? It makes it a little more interesting. I used to have one called Hot Hands Spazgoula. I like to create a lot of characters.

HRN: This is almost like you could do a cartoon series with some of your friends in the gambling community.

Carville: I like gamblers. I do. Just as a group of people. I find them to be engaging, obviously risk- takers that know the language. I’ve enjoyed being around gamblers.

HRN: As a guy has been around Washington a little bit, did it surprise you in any way that it took so long for sports gambling to be legalized? Or was that not a surprise to at all?

Carville: It’s like porn, OK? You can say it’s legal or illegal. People do it. I think society has come to a recognition. In Louisiana with the first sports betting, we were per capita No. 1 in the country. Now that’s not good; we’re a poor state. I guarantee you there’s a lot of people that bet on this stuff that got no business doing it. But I do. I’m not a whale or anything like that. I’m a $50-a-race guy.

HRN: You are not moving the number singlehandedly.

Carville: No, no. I went with a friend of mine to the dog track in Providence, R.I., and we were like $300 ahead, and we had to go. So we all put it on the next race. The dog was 20-1, and it went to 3-1 in one bet. Now it’s all looped into the same thing, so it’s a different sport now.

HRN: Nationwide and worldwide.

Carville: Right, right.

HRN: But it is not quite that way yet with sports, because you can still sneak up on a house. It’s not interstate yet. Do you find, like, if you are gambling on LSU, you might want to go out of state, because there is so much of a play here on LSU?

Carville: Yeah, there is. If they’re minus-six (elsewhere), they’d probably be minus-seven here or 7 1/2. I’ve always thought a lot of people bet against the Cowboys because …

HRN: They are overplayed.

Carville: I’ve tried every system in the world, and I’m still behind.

HRN: But you still enjoy it.

Carville: I still enjoy it.

HRN: I know your friend Michael (Beychok) has said that he’s going to stay away from horse racing until a lot of things are reformed. I take it you’re maybe not as dour a person when it comes to the future of this sport.

Carville: Yeah, I don’t know. I think Michael is probably struggling.

HRN: But he makes some good points.

Carville: Some great points. I was talking to Chad and Mr. Brant here. The bettors have to have a lobbying group or something. They’re the people on support. People that come here and bet $50 a race are the people that really support horse racing. That’s what it exists for. Bettors don’t have any interest group. There’s nobody that looks out for our interests. We know it, but we love the sport anyway.

HRN: And we keep coming back. Whether it is horses or people, there is a lot to be attracted by this sport, isn’t there?

Carville: It is. These animals are just glorious, and it’s beautiful. Usually, the meet is at the right time of year when we have ours here, so I like it. I mean I enjoy it. If I hit a good lick, I’m happy. But if I lose, I’m still happy.