New Mexico has a rocky gaming background. When the IGRA was passed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to cash in on the Indian casino bandwagon. Politics assured that would not be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a task force in Nineteen Ninety to create a contract with New Mexico American Indian bands. When the panel arrived at an agreement with two prominent local tribes a year later, the Governor declined to sign the agreement. He held up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took over in 1995, it appeared that Native gaming in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the contract with the Indian bands, anti-gambling forces were able to hold the deal up in the courts. A New Mexico court ruled that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing the deal, therefore denying the government of New Mexico many 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 ball rolling on a full contract between the State of New Mexico and its Amerindian bands. A decade had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, which includes Amerindian casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo industry has increased since 1999. That year, New Mexico non-profit game operators brought in just $3,048. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed one million dollars in revenues in 2001. Non-profit Bingo earnings have grown steadily since then. 2005 witnessed the greatest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the operators.
Bingo is apparently popular in New Mexico. All sorts of providers try for a slice of the action. Hopefully, the politicos are through batting over gaming as an important factor like they did back in the 1990’s. That is probably wishful thinking.