New Mexico has a stormy gambling history. 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 American Indian casino bandwagon. Politics assured that would not be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a task force in Nineteen Ninety to negotiate a compact with New Mexico Indian bands. When the panel came to an accord with two prominent local bands a year later, the Governor declined to sign the agreement. He held up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took over in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that Amerindian betting in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor signed the contract with the Amerindian bands, anti-gaming groups were able to hold the deal up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the deal, thus denying the state of New Mexico hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.
It required the CNA, signed by the New Mexico legislature, to get the process moving on a full contract between the State of New Mexico and its Amerindian bands. A decade had been lost for gaming in New Mexico, including Native casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo industry has grown from Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico charity game operators acquired only $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and passed a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Non-profit Bingo earnings have increased constantly since then. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the biggest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the operators.
Bingo is clearly beloved in New Mexico. All sorts of owners try for a bit of the pie. Hopefully, the politicos are done batting around gambling as a key matter like they did back in the 1990’s. That’s probably hopeful thinking.
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