New Mexico has a complex gaming background. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it seemed like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the Native casino craze. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a working group in Nineteen Ninety to discuss a compact with New Mexico Indian tribes. When the working group arrived at an agreement with 2 important 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 over in 1995, it seemed that Indian gambling in New Mexico was a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the contract with the Indian bands, anti-gambling forces were able to tie the accord up in courts. A New Mexico court ruled that Governor Johnson had out stepped his bounds in signing the deal, thereby denying the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.
It took the CNA, passed by the New Mexico government, to get the process moving on a full contract amongst the Government of New Mexico and its American Indian tribes. A decade had been squandered for gambling in New Mexico, including Indian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo business has increased since 1999. In that year, New Mexico non-profit game operators brought in just $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo revenues have increased constantly since then. 2005 witnessed the greatest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the operators.
Bingo is clearly popular in New Mexico. All kinds of owners try for a bit of the action. Hopefully, the politicians are done batting over gambling as a key factor like they did in the 1990’s. That is without doubt wishful thinking.
