New Mexico has a stormy gambling past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by the House in 1989, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to cash in on the American Indian casino craze. Politics assured that would not be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a task force in 1990 to draft a compact with New Mexico Indian bands. When the task force arrived at an accord with two important local bands a year later, Governor King declined to sign the bargain. He would hold up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took over in 1995, it seemed that Amerindian gambling in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the compact with the Amerindian tribes, anti-gambling forces were able to tie the contract up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing the accord, thereby denying the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It required the Compact Negotiation Act, signed by the New Mexico government, to get the ball rolling on a full accord amongst the State of New Mexico and its Amerindian tribes. A decade had been burned for gaming in New Mexico, which includes Native casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo industry has grown from 1999. In that year, New Mexico not for profit game providers brought in only $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed one million dollars in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo earnings have increased constantly since then. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the largest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the operators.
Bingo is clearly popular in New Mexico. All types of providers look for a bit of the action. Hopefully, the politicos are through batting around gambling as an important factor like they did in the 1990’s. That’s most likely hopeful thinking.