New Mexico has a complex gaming past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico might be one of the states to cash in on the American Indian casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that would not be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a working group in 1990 to create a compact with New Mexico Amerindian bands. When the panel arrived at an accord with two prominent local tribes a year later, Governor King declined to sign the agreement. He would hold up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took office in Nineteen Ninety Five, it appeared that Indian gambling in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the accord with the Native tribes, anti-gaming groups were able to tie the deal up in the courts. A New Mexico court ruled that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the accord, thereby denying the state 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 accord amongst the Government of New Mexico and its Native bands. A decade had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, which includes Indian casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo business has gotten bigger from 1999. In that year, New Mexico not for profit game owners acquired only $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Not for profit Bingo revenues have grown steadily since then. 2005 witnessed the greatest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the providers.
Bingo is certainly popular in New Mexico. All sorts of operators look for a slice of the action. Hopefully, the politicians are done batting over gambling as an important factor like they did back in the 1990’s. That’s probably hopeful thinking.