New Mexico has a complex gambling history. When the IGRA was passed by the House in 1989, it seemed like New Mexico might be one of the states to cash in on the Native casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a working group in Nineteen Ninety to draft a compact with New Mexico Indian tribes. When the panel arrived at an accord with two big local tribes a year later, the Governor refused to sign the bargain. He held up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took over in Nineteen Ninety Five, it appeared that American Indian betting in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor signed the compact with the Amerindian tribes, anti-gaming forces were able to tie the contract up in courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had out stepped his bounds in signing a deal, thus denying the government of New Mexico hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.
It took the Compact Negotiation Act, passed by the New Mexico house, to get the ball rolling on a full contract between the State of New Mexico and its American Indian tribes. A decade had been burned for gaming in New Mexico, including American Indian casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo industry has grown from 1999. In that year, New Mexico non-profit game operators acquired only $3,048. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars in 2001. Non-profit Bingo earnings have increased steadily since that time. 2005 saw the largest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the operators.
Bingo is clearly favored in New Mexico. All sorts of operators look for a slice of the pie. Hopefully, the politicos are done batting over gaming as an important issue like they did back in the 1990’s. That’s probably wishful thinking.
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