New Mexico has a stormy gaming past. When the IGRA was passed by Congress in 1989, it looked like New Mexico might 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 assembled a working group in Nineteen Ninety to draft a contract with New Mexico Indian bands. When the task force arrived at an agreement with two prominent local tribes a year later, the Governor refused to sign the agreement. He would hold up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took over in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that American Indian gaming in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor signed the contract with the Native tribes, anti-gambling groups were able to tie the accord up in the courts. A New Mexico court ruled that Governor Johnson had out stepped his bounds in signing the accord, thus denying the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It took the CNA, signed by the New Mexico house, to get the process moving on a full contract between the Government of New Mexico and its Indian bands. 10 years had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, including American Indian casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo industry has increased since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico not for profit game operators brought in only $3,048. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo earnings have grown constantly since then. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the greatest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the operators.
Bingo is clearly favored in New Mexico. All types of providers look for a bit of the action. Hopefully, the politicians are through batting around gaming as a hot button matter like they did back in the 1990’s. That is without doubt wishful thinking.