New Mexico has a bitter gaming past. When the IGRA was passed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it seemed like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the Native casino craze. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a working group in Nineteen Ninety to draft a contract with New Mexico Indian tribes. When the working group came to an agreement with two prominent local bands a year later, Governor King declined to sign the agreement. He held up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took over in 1995, it seemed that Native gaming in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the accord with the Indian bands, anti-gambling forces were able to hold the accord up in the courts. A New Mexico court ruled that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the compact, thus costing the state of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.
It took the CNA, signed by the New Mexico house, to get the process moving on a full accord between the Government of New Mexico and its American Indian bands. Ten years had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, which includes Native casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo business has gotten bigger from Nineteen Ninety-Nine. That year, New Mexico charity game operators brought in only $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and passed one million dollars in revenues in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo revenues have grown constantly since that time. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the biggest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the owners.
Bingo is apparently popular in New Mexico. All sorts of providers look for a bit of the pie. Hopefully, the politicos are done batting around gambling as a key issue like they did back in the 1990’s. That’s probably wishful thinking.
