New Mexico has a stormy gaming past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it seemed like New Mexico might be one of the states to cash in on the Native casino bandwagon. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a task force in Nineteen Ninety to create a compact with New Mexico Native bands. When the task force came to an accord with two prominent local bands a year later, Governor King refused to sign the agreement. He held up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took office in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that Native gaming in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the contract with the Indian bands, anti-gaming forces were able to tie the deal 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 required the CNA, passed by the New Mexico house, to get the ball rolling on a full contract between the State of New Mexico and its Indian bands. Ten years had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, including American Indian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo business has gotten bigger from 1999. In that year, New Mexico charity game operators brought in just $3,048 in revenues. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed one million dollars in revenues in 2001. Not for profit Bingo revenues have grown constantly since then. 2005 witnessed the biggest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the operators.
Bingo is certainly beloved 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 is probably wishful thinking.
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