New Mexico has a stormy gambling past. When the IGRA was passed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to get on the Indian casino bandwagon. Politics assured that would not be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a task force in 1990 to draft a compact with New Mexico Amerindian tribes. When the panel came to an accord with 2 big local bands a year later, the Governor refused to sign the bargain. He held up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took over in 1995, it appeared that Amerindian gambling in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the contract with the Amerindian tribes, anti-gambling forces were able to tie the contract up in the courts. A New Mexico court ruled that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing the accord, therefore costing the government of New Mexico hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.
It required the Compact Negotiation Act, signed by the New Mexico legislature, to get the process moving on a full compact between the Government of New Mexico and its Native tribes. A decade had been burned for gaming in New Mexico, which includes Native casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo business has gotten bigger from Nineteen Ninety-Nine. That year, New Mexico non-profit game providers brought in just $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo revenues have increased constantly since that time. Two Thousand and Five saw the greatest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the providers.
Bingo is clearly popular in New Mexico. All kinds of owners try for a slice of the action. Hopefully, the politicians are through batting over gambling as a key matter like they did in the 90’s. That is probably wishful thinking.