New Mexico has a bitter gambling background. When the IGRA was signed by the House in 1989, it seemed like New Mexico would be one of the states to get on the Indian casino bandwagon. Politics assured 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 working group came to an accord with two important 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 office in Nineteen Ninety Five, it appeared that Indian gambling in New Mexico was a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the contract with the Amerindian bands, anti-gaming groups were able to tie the accord up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the compact, thereby denying the state of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It took the Compact Negotiation Act, signed by the New Mexico house, to get the ball rolling on a full compact between the State of New Mexico and its Native tribes. A decade had been squandered for gambling in New Mexico, which includes Native casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo business has grown from Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico charity game operators acquired only $3,048 in revenues. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and passed one million dollars in 2001. Non-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 beloved in New Mexico. All kinds of owners try for a bit of the pie. Hopefully, the politicians are through batting over gambling as a hot button issue like they did back in the 1990’s. That’s probably hopeful thinking.
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