New Mexico has a stormy gambling background. When the IGRA was passed by the House in 1989, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to cash in on the Native casino craze. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a task force in 1990 to create a contract with New Mexico Indian bands. When the panel came to an agreement with two big local bands a year later, the Governor refused to sign the agreement. He held up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took office in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that Native betting in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the compact with the Native bands, anti-gaming forces were able to tie the accord up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing a deal, thereby denying the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It took the CNA, passed by the New Mexico government, to get the ball rolling on a full contract between the State of New Mexico and its Amerindian bands. A decade had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, which includes American Indian casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo industry has increased from 1999. In that year, New Mexico charity game operators acquired only $3,048. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and passed one million dollars in revenues in 2001. Not for profit Bingo revenues have grown constantly since then. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the greatest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the providers.
Bingo is clearly popular in New Mexico. All sorts of providers look for a bit of the pie. Hopefully, the politicians are through batting around gaming as a hot button factor like they did back in the 1990’s. That’s without doubt hopeful thinking.
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