New Mexico has a bitter gaming past. When the IGRA was signed by the House in 1989, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to cash in on the Amerindian casino craze. Politics guaranteed that would not be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a working group in Nineteen Ninety to create a contract with New Mexico Indian tribes. When the panel arrived at an agreement with two prominent local bands a year later, Governor King declined to sign the bargain. He would hold up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took over in 1995, it seemed that Amerindian gaming in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the compact with the Indian bands, anti-gambling forces were able to tie the contract up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had out stepped his bounds in signing a deal, therefore denying the state of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It took the Compact Negotiation Act, passed by the New Mexico government, to get the process moving on a full contract between the Government of New Mexico and its American Indian tribes. A decade had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, including American Indian casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo business has gotten bigger from 1999. That year, New Mexico non-profit game owners brought in only $3,048. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed one million dollars in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo revenues have grown constantly since that time. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the greatest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the providers.
Bingo is apparently popular in New Mexico. All types of providers try for a piece of the action. Hopefully, the politicians are done batting around gaming as a key issue like they did in the 90’s. That’s probably hopeful thinking.
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