New Mexico has a stormy gambling background. When the IGRA was signed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico might be one of the states to cash in on the Indian casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a task force in 1990 to discuss a contract with New Mexico American Indian bands. When the panel came to an accord with two important local tribes a year later, the Governor refused to sign the bargain. He held up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took office in 1995, it seemed that Indian gambling in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the contract with the American Indian bands, anti-gambling forces were able to tie the deal up in the courts. A New Mexico court ruled that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the deal, therefore costing the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It required the Compact Negotiation Act, signed by the New Mexico government, to get the process moving on a full contract between the State of New Mexico and its Amerindian tribes. A decade had been burned for gaming in New Mexico, which includes Native casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo business has grown since 1999. In that year, New Mexico not for profit game operators brought in only $3,048 in revenues. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and passed one million dollars in 2001. Not for profit Bingo revenues have increased steadily since that time. 2005 witnessed the largest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the operators.
Bingo is apparently popular in New Mexico. All sorts of operators look for a bit of the pie. Hopefully, the politicians are done batting over gaming as a key issue like they did back in the 90’s. That is without doubt wishful thinking.