A group that is seeking state approval for the sixth and last racino license in New Mexico gave more than $25,000 in donations to just inaugurated Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham’s campaign last year, the Santa Fe New Mexican reported last week.
It also reported that a second group that has applied for a racino license in Clovis donated more than $5,000 to the Grisham campaign last year. That group is called Gaming Advisors.
Now that she is governor, Grisham controls the New Mexico Racing Commission, which is responsible for issuing the license. She could either let the panel issue the license, as it had planned to do, or appoint a new board, and set the process back to square one.
A spokesman for the governor told the New Mexican “The governor wants to comprehensively evaluate the situation before setting a course,” and called the licensing process so far “a bit of a muddled process.”
The current board was appointed by the previous governor, Susana Martinez. It has voted three times to postpone the decision to issue a license, under the gun of a court petition by one of the bidders, which claims that the process is tainted by what it calls an inadequate feasibility study.
The complaint was made by Hidalgo Downs, which bid to build a racino Lordsburg. The feasibility study did not reach a favorable conclusion about the proposal. The Attorney General threatened not to defend the commission from the lawsuit if it didn’t postpone its decision until after the inauguration.
Bidders for the license include three that have applied to build a racino in Clovis, plus one each for Tucamcari and the Hidalgo Downs bid for Lordsburg.
One of the bidders, Clovis Racetrack and Casino, is owned by Shaun and Joan Hubbard, who each contributed $5,000 to Grisham.
Lee Lewis of Lubbock, Texas, another principal in Clovis Racetrack and Casino, also made a $5,000 contribution the same day. Two other principals in the group, Resource Protection and Cope Investments, each gave $5000 apiece to the governor’s campaign that same day.
