New Mexico has a bitter gaming past. When the IGRA was signed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it seemed like New Mexico would 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 assembled a working group in 1990 to negotiate a compact with New Mexico Amerindian tribes. When the task force came to an agreement with two important local tribes a year later, the Governor declined to sign the agreement. He held up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took over in Nineteen Ninety Five, it appeared that Indian gambling in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the accord with the Indian bands, anti-gambling groups were able to hold the deal up in courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the accord, thereby costing the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It took the Compact Negotiation Act, signed by the New Mexico house, to get the ball rolling on a full contract between the State of New Mexico and its Indian bands. A decade had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, including American Indian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo business has grown from Nineteen Ninety-Nine. That year, New Mexico charity game providers acquired only $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in 2001. Non-profit Bingo earnings have increased steadily since then. Two Thousand and Five saw the greatest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the owners.
Bingo is categorically popular in New Mexico. All types of providers try for a bit of the action. Hopefully, the politicians are done batting over gambling as a hot button factor like they did in the 90’s. That’s probably wishful thinking.
