New Mexico has a complex gaming past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by the House in 1989, it looked like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the Indian casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that would not be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a task force in Nineteen Ninety to negotiate an accord with New Mexico American Indian tribes. When the task force came to an accord with two big local bands a year later, the Governor refused to sign the bargain. He held up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took over in Nineteen Ninety Five, it appeared that Amerindian betting in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the contract with the Indian bands, anti-gambling groups were able to hold the contract up in courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing the deal, thus denying the government of New Mexico hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It took the Compact Negotiation Act, passed by the New Mexico government, to get the ball rolling on a full contract between the State of New Mexico and its Amerindian tribes. A decade had been burned for gaming in New Mexico, including Native casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo industry has gotten bigger from Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico charity game owners acquired just $3,048. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo revenues have increased constantly since that time. 2005 witnessed the largest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the operators.
Bingo is clearly popular in New Mexico. All types of owners look for a piece of the pie. Hopefully, the politicians are done batting over gaming as a hot button issue like they did back in the 90’s. That is without doubt hopeful thinking.