New Mexico has a rocky gaming background. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by Congress in 1989, it seemed like New Mexico might be one of the states to cash in on the American Indian casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a working group in Nineteen Ninety to draft a contract with New Mexico American Indian tribes. When the working group arrived at an accord with two big local bands a year later, Governor King refused to sign the agreement. He held up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took office in Nineteen Ninety Five, it appeared that Amerindian wagering in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the contract with the Native bands, anti-gaming groups were able to tie the contract up in courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing a deal, thus denying the state of New Mexico hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It took the Compact Negotiation Act, signed by the New Mexico house, to get the ball rolling on a full contract amongst the State of New Mexico and its Native tribes. A decade had been burned for gaming in New Mexico, including American Indian casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo industry has grown from Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico non-profit game owners acquired only $3,048 in revenues. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and passed one 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 providers.
Bingo is clearly popular in New Mexico. All kinds of providers look for a slice of the pie. Hopefully, the politicos are through batting over gambling as a hot button matter like they did in the 1990’s. That is probably wishful thinking.