New Mexico has a stormy gaming background. When the IGRA was signed by the House in 1989, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to get on the Native casino bandwagon. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a task force in 1990 to discuss an accord with New Mexico American Indian tribes. When the working group arrived at an agreement with two big local tribes a year later, the Governor refused to sign the bargain. He would hold up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took office in 1995, it seemed that Native gambling in New Mexico was a certainty. But when the new Governor signed the compact with the Indian tribes, anti-gaming forces were able to hold the deal up in courts. A New Mexico court ruled that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing a deal, thus denying the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It took the Compact Negotiation Act, signed by the New Mexico government, to get the process moving on a full contract between the State of New Mexico and its Native tribes. A decade had been burned for gaming in New Mexico, which includes Amerindian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo industry has grown since 1999. In that year, New Mexico not for profit game operators brought in only $3,048. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo revenues have increased constantly since that time. Two Thousand and Five saw the largest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the operators.
Bingo is apparently popular in New Mexico. All kinds of operators try for a bit of the action. Hopefully, the politicians are through batting over gambling as a hot button factor like they did in the 90’s. That’s without doubt hopeful thinking.
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