Unless Kentucky residents are directly associated with the horse industry, I don't think they don't care about it. They don't care about it in Appalachia, they don't care about it in southwest Kentucky.
There is a huge financial and cultural discrepency within Kentucky that fights against understanding.
There are three areas in Kentucky: Louisville, Lexington, and outside Cincinnati - that are a bit urban, but still very conservative; and the rest of the state is rural and extremely religiously conservative, and far more worried about surviving than what to order at Starbucks.
You can try and make them care about it all you want, and try and "educate" them, and they don't care. All you will hear is, "Gambling is sin".
I live in a town just north of Lexington that, a few years back, after a 15-year-fight, finally allows drinks to be sold with dinner in restaurants. Can't buy liquor in the country, only drinks with dinner. The only reason it passed is that the population of "outsiders" increased over time enough to make it squeek by.
We went from McDonalds & KFC only to having an Applebys, O'Charleys, Ruby Tuesdays, huge growth in the population of the town, etc. There is still a strong public force trying to currently overturn that, to go back to what used to be, and Sunday sales of drinks in those currently serving restaurants was just overwhelmingly defeated (although they are not hurting for business from locals at all <g>)
Edit: and I have to mention, this was invovling a completely busted-out town budget (decrease in school, fire, etc) and the suggestion was to open liquor to Sunday sales in restaurants now serving 6 days a week, a move that would immediately provide more than enough tax revenue to quickly fix the deficit. You would think the anti-sinners would want the sinners taxed! <g> The NO WAY crowd was so loud, the consideration was withdrawn. No liquor on the Lord's day. Being broke is better.
Seriously - these folks quote the Bible to me as reason not to neuter or spay their dogs.
The casino operators just over the river from Kentucky only have to worry about damping down enthusiasm in mainly in the big towns: Louisville and Cincinnati and Paducah, but even if those towns voted in favor of gambling (and I don't think it's a given) the rest of the state would vote it down. This state is overwhelmingly, staunchly, conservative.
Don't mention porn mags and the Kentuckians who cross the river to gamble, and who drive across county lines to drink, as hipocrisy doesn't fly Sunday mornings when one is feelin' rightous and morally superior and ther sermon is good <g>
They just increased taxes on the bourbon industry (cigs and drink the only sins to tax) but they completely, totally fail to see that gambling would pour money into state coffers. Money that currently is being spent by Kentuckians across the rivers. Seriously - gambling is sin, it will never happen if a huge proportion of the population has any say. And they do. They are rabid about it.
When people rally around a moral argument, any facts on either side of the argument are just extraneous noise. And boy, these folks around here can rally 'round Jesus
I mean, you can tell them, vote for this, and your rural and poor town will then have fire protection, and health services for everyone addicted to Oxycontin and meth, and they will take refuge in the moral arguments.