New Mexico has a rocky gambling past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it seemed like New Mexico would be one of the states to get on the American Indian casino bandwagon. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a task force in Nineteen Ninety to negotiate an accord with New Mexico Native tribes. When the panel arrived at an agreement with two big local tribes 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 Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that Amerindian betting in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the contract with the Native bands, anti-gambling forces were able to tie the contract up in courts. A New Mexico court ruled that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing the deal, thus denying the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.
It required the CNA, signed by the New Mexico legislature, to get the process moving on a full compact between the Government of New Mexico and its American Indian tribes. Ten years had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, which includes Native casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo business has grown since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. 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 passed one million dollars in 2001. Not for profit Bingo earnings have grown steadily since then. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the biggest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the owners.
Bingo is certainly popular in New Mexico. All kinds of operators look for a piece of the pie. Hopefully, the politicians are through batting over gambling as an important issue like they did in the 1990’s. That is most likely wishful thinking.