New Mexico has a rocky gambling past. When the IGRA was passed by Congress in 1989, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to cash in on the Indian casino bandwagon. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a working group in Nineteen Ninety to discuss a compact with New Mexico American Indian tribes. When the panel arrived at an accord with two big local bands a year later, the Governor refused to sign the bargain. He would hold up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took over in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that Indian gambling in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the accord with the Native bands, anti-gambling groups were able to tie the deal up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the accord, therefore costing the state of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.
It took the CNA, signed by the New Mexico legislature, to get the process moving on a full accord between the Government of New Mexico and its Indian tribes. A decade had been burned for gaming in New Mexico, which includes Amerindian casino Bingo.
The not for profit Bingo business has increased since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico non-profit game owners brought in only $3,048 in revenues. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Not for profit Bingo revenues have increased steadily since that time. 2005 saw the largest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the operators.
Bingo is certainly beloved in New Mexico. All sorts of owners look for a slice of the pie. Hopefully, the politicos are through batting around gaming as an important issue like they did in the 90’s. That is most likely wishful thinking.