New Mexico has a stormy gaming background. When the IGRA was passed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the Indian casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a panel in Nineteen Ninety to draft a contract with New Mexico Amerindian tribes. When the task force arrived at an agreement with two important local tribes a year later, the Governor refused to sign the agreement. He would hold up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took office in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that Indian gaming in New Mexico was a certainty. But when the new Governor signed the accord with the Indian bands, anti-gaming groups were able to hold the contract up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor 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, passed by the New Mexico government, to get the ball rolling on a full contract amongst the State of New Mexico and its American Indian bands. A decade had been lost for gaming in New Mexico, including Indian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo business has gotten bigger since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico charity game providers brought in only $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded one million dollars in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo earnings have increased constantly since that time. 2005 witnessed the biggest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the providers.
Bingo is apparently popular in New Mexico. All sorts of providers look for a piece of the pie. Hopefully, the politicians are done batting around gambling as a key issue like they did back in the 1990’s. That’s probably wishful thinking.