The first mention of selling the state lottery came six months ago during a phone conversation between two old friends talking about a reunion.

Phil Wilson, Gov. Rick Perry's deputy chief of staff, was asking his former boss, Phil Gramm, a retired Republican U.S. senator turned investment banker, what he was working on nowadays.

Selling lotteries, he said.

That casual conversation and an unsolicited call from a competing investment firm led to two separate pitches from investment bankers to Wilson in the fall and follow-up meetings from the same firms over the past two weeks.

UBS, where Gramm is vice chairman, and Morgan Stanley may be front-runners in helping the governor's office explore the sale of the Texas Lottery, but other firms are calling now that Perry, in his State of the State speech, urged the Legislature to sell it to establish trust funds for cancer research and health care subsidies for uninsured Texans.

The governor's office is conferring with other state leaders about how and when to retain an investment banker, or a team of them, to advise state officials as the Legislature debates whether to sell or keep the lottery.

"This is not happening in a vacuum," said Wilson, who expects a decision on hiring advisers to come "in the very near future."

So far, Perry's proposal to sell the lottery — which has returned a profit of about $1 billion annually for the past three years — for an estimated $14 billion to $20 billion has attracted more skepticism than love. Critics have questioned the sale price, the assumption that the trust funds could earn 9 percent in interest annually and who might benefit.

"Somebody will make money," Wilson said. "This is America."

But he stressed that investment advisers, if hired, won't be paid any fees unless the Legislature and voters approve the sale and the state gets the amount that it expects.

"If we're not going to get the money we need, we're not going to sell the asset," Wilson said. "That would be irresponsible."

On Tuesday, Wilson, flanked by Perry's press secretary, Robert Black, sat down to set the record straight about issues surrounding the sale of the lottery, particularly questions about who might benefit and how the idea was born.

News reports have raised questions about whether former Perry staffers who are now lobbyists might benefit; whether the sale is just a bone to Perry's old political friend Gramm; and, finally, whether the governor's son, Griffin, a recent economics graduate from Vanderbilt University, was hired by UBS as payback.

Black dismissed those concerns as ludicrous. He said that Perry had made no calls on his son's behalf and that Griffin Perry, 23, works in the division dealing with management of individual wealth, not public financing.

Wilson retraced how UBS and Morgan Stanley became involved.

In August, Wilson said, he was talking to Gramm, his former boss, about a reunion of former Gramm staffers when the conversation turned to Gramm's latest interest, selling lotteries. (Before joining the governor's office, Wilson worked for Gramm from 1991 to 1997 and from 1999 to 2002, the last time as the senator's state director.)

Wilson said that within two weeks, he got an unrelated call from bankers at Morgan Stanley asking whether Texas might want to sell its lottery.

During the fall, Perry was focused on winning re-election, but Wilson was noticing that other states, including California and Massachusetts, were starting programs to provide health insurance to the uninsured.

Wilson was looking for a way to do it without new taxes or employer mandates.

Mark Lake, a spokesman for Morgan Stanley, said his firm called Wilson because of another national trend: The sale of transportation projects such as the Chicago Skyway and Indianapolis toll roads prompted public officials and investment bankers to look at other public assets that might be sold.

"The success of those projects," Lake said, "got people thinking."

Lotteries apparently came to mind and became this year's trend as other states, including Illinois, Indiana and New Jersey, began investigating selling their lotteries.

UBS worked on the sale of the Greek and Italian lotteries and is advising Illinois and New Jersey as they debate selling theirs. Morgan Stanley is advising Indiana.

Both companies do work in Texas, underwriting bond sales, including for the Texas Department of Transportation.

In late September or early October, teams from UBS and Morgan Stanley made separate presentations to Wilson. They came to the same conclusion: Selling the Texas Lottery's revenue stream over the next 40 years could be worth at least $14 billion and, depending on how the sale is structured, potentially a lot more.

"I listened. I took notes," Wilson said. "We were in the middle of a campaign, and that's where the governor's focus was."

After the election, Perry and his staff began focusing on how to finance big ideas such as helping insure Texans and making Texas a leader in cancer research.

Perry's groundbreaking proposals caught most lawmakers off-guard.

"Anything that's big and different and breaks the status quo is going to create a lot of discussion," Wilson said. "We're early in the process."

The governor's office has not disclosed who will sponsor the legislation. But Wilson said, "I think we have some interested legislators."

The focus, Wilson said, should be on what Perry hopes to accomplish: Subsidizing health insurance for uninsured Texans and becoming a cancer research leader. "It's a huge opportunity," Wilson said.

If the Legislature wants to finance it another way, he said, "that's fine, too."