| New Mexico At least $927,105 -- Includes 1992-96 campaign contributions June 9, 1997 The Land of Enchantment has been the Land of Resentment since 1995, when the state Supreme Court struck down the gambling compacts that 14 Indian tribes had signed with Gov. Gary Johnson. New Mexico also offers horse racing and a lottery, but the political action recently has centered on Indian gaming. Having poured a quarter of a million dollars into the governor's election campaign, the tribes aren't about to give up their investment; in 1996 they gave almost twice that amount to legislative and judicial candidates deemed favorable to casino gambling. Their biggest single recipient in the final reporting period: the Republican challenger of the state Supreme Court justice who wrote the anti-casino decision. New Mexico's state Web site lists lobbyists and the organizations they represent, but no financial information; both campaign finance records and lobbying reports are only available on paper. But local public interest groups have done some of the expensive and time-consuming investigative work already: The New Mexico Coalition Against Gambling analyzed figures from the Secretary of State and found that Indian tribes gave the gambling-friendly governor at least $193,000 before his elec tion in 1994 and $60,000 afterward. The group Revisioning New Mexico found that gambling interests gave over $116,000 to legislative candidates in the 1992 and 1994 elections; in 1996, the amount rocketed to $557,620 for legislative and judicial candidat es -- $417,600 of which came just from the tribes -- according to analyses by the Albuquerque Journal. * approximate Sources: New Mexico Secretary of State data compiled by Revisioning New Mexico (line 2), New Mexico Coalition Against Gambling (lines 3-4), and Albuquerque Journal (lines 5-7)
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