New Mexico has a rocky gaming background. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it seemed like New Mexico would be one of the states to cash in on the American Indian casino craze. Politics guaranteed that would not be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a panel in 1990 to draft a compact with New Mexico Native tribes. When the working group came to an agreement with 2 big local bands a year later, the Governor refused to sign the agreement. He held up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took office in Nineteen Ninety Five, it appeared that Native wagering in New Mexico was a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the contract with the American Indian bands, anti-gaming groups were able to hold the deal up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had overstepped 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 took the Compact Negotiation Act, passed by the New Mexico government, to get the ball rolling on a full accord amongst the Government of New Mexico and its Indian tribes. A decade had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, including Native casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo business has grown from 1999. In that year, New Mexico not for profit game owners brought in only $3,048 in revenues. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed one million dollars in revenues in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo revenues have grown constantly since that time. 2005 saw the biggest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the providers.
Bingo is certainly popular in New Mexico. All sorts of owners try for a piece of the pie. With hope, the politicians are done batting around gaming as a hot button issue like they did in the 90’s. That’s probably hopeful thinking.