New Mexico has a bitter gambling past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by the House in 1989, it seemed like New Mexico might be one of the states to cash in on the Amerindian casino bandwagon. Politics assured that would not be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a working group in 1990 to draft an accord with New Mexico Indian tribes. When the working group came to an accord with two important local bands a year later, the Governor declined to sign the agreement. He would hold up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took over in 1995, it seemed that Native gaming in New Mexico was a certainty. But when the new Governor signed the accord with the Indian bands, anti-gambling groups were able to tie the accord up in courts. A New Mexico court ruled that the Governor had out stepped his bounds in signing the compact, thereby denying the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.
It required the Compact Negotiation Act, passed by the New Mexico government, to get the process moving on a full accord between the State of New Mexico and its Native bands. A decade had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, including American Indian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo industry has gotten bigger since 1999. That year, New Mexico charity game operators acquired only $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo earnings have grown constantly since then. Two Thousand and Five saw the largest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the operators.
Bingo is categorically popular in New Mexico. All sorts of operators try for a slice of the action. Hopefully, the politicos are through batting around gaming as a hot button matter like they did in the 1990’s. That’s probably wishful thinking.
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