New Mexico has a stormy gambling background. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by Congress in 1989, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to get on the Amerindian casino craze. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a working group in 1990 to draft a compact with New Mexico American Indian tribes. When the panel came to an agreement with two prominent local bands a year later, the Governor declined to sign the bargain. He held up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took office in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that Native gambling in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the accord with the Native bands, anti-gaming forces were able to tie the contract up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing a deal, thereby costing the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It took the CNA, signed by the New Mexico house, to get the process moving on a full compact between the State of New Mexico and its Native tribes. Ten years had been squandered for gaming in New Mexico, including Amerindian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo business has gotten bigger from 1999. In that year, New Mexico non-profit game owners acquired just $3,048 in revenues. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Non-profit Bingo earnings have increased steadily since then. Two Thousand and Five saw the largest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the operators.
Bingo is clearly beloved in New Mexico. All kinds of providers look for a piece of the pie. Hopefully, the politicians are through batting around gambling as a key factor like they did in the 1990’s. That is without doubt wishful thinking.
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