They used to write and illustrate separately. Not sure if they still do but back when I visited the site I remember having a favorite illustrator. So C&H was especially prone to this.
FWIW the dev claims to hate gambling. Playing Cards and poker hands are just theming, as you visit the shop more things really get off rails, but even before that you have multiple hands to get the target score and multiple mulligans to shape those hands.
The problem being that a fledgling political organization has to then expend the energy to endorse a candidate outside their party and vote in support of one enemy over another enemy.