New Mexico has a bitter gambling past. When the IGRA was signed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it seemed like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the Native casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a working group in 1990 to discuss a compact with New Mexico American Indian bands. When the panel came to an accord with 2 important local bands a year later, the Governor declined to sign the bargain. He held up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took over in 1995, it seemed that Native gambling in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the contract with the Amerindian tribes, anti-wagering groups were able to hold the accord up in courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the accord, thus denying the state of New Mexico 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 process moving on a full accord amongst the Government of New Mexico and its Amerindian bands. A decade had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, including Amerindian casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo business has grown since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. That year, New Mexico not for profit 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. Non-profit Bingo revenues have grown steadily since then. Two Thousand and Five saw the greatest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the owners.
Bingo is clearly favored in New Mexico. All sorts of providers try for a piece of the action. Hopefully, the politicians are done batting around gambling as a hot button issue like they did in the 1990’s. That’s without doubt hopeful thinking.