New Mexico has a stormy gaming past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the Indian casino bandwagon. Politics assured that would not be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a working group in 1990 to discuss a compact with New Mexico American Indian tribes. When the task force arrived at an accord with two prominent local bands a year later, the Governor declined to sign the bargain. He would hold up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took office in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that Amerindian betting in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the compact with the American Indian bands, anti-gaming groups were able to hold the contract up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had out stepped his bounds in signing the accord, thereby denying the state of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It took the Compact Negotiation Act, passed by the New Mexico legislature, to get the ball rolling on a full compact amongst the State of New Mexico and its Amerindian tribes. A decade had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, which includes Amerindian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo business has gotten bigger from Nineteen Ninety-Nine. That year, New Mexico not for profit game providers brought in just $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and passed a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo earnings have increased constantly since that time. Two Thousand and Five saw the largest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the operators.
Bingo is categorically beloved in New Mexico. All kinds of owners look for a slice of the pie. Hopefully, the politicians are done batting around gaming as a hot button factor like they did back in the 1990’s. That is most likely wishful thinking.
