New Mexico has a stormy gambling history. 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 cash in on the American Indian casino bandwagon. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a panel in Nineteen Ninety to discuss a compact with New Mexico Amerindian tribes. When the panel arrived at an agreement with two prominent local tribes a year later, Governor King refused to sign the agreement. He would hold up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took over in 1995, it seemed that Native betting in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the contract with the Indian bands, anti-gaming 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 costing 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 house, to get the ball rolling on a full contract amongst the Government of New Mexico and its Indian bands. Ten years had been squandered for gambling in New Mexico, including Indian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo industry has increased since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico charity game owners acquired only $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded one million dollars in revenues in 2001. Not for profit Bingo earnings have increased constantly since then. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the biggest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the owners.
Bingo is certainly popular in New Mexico. All sorts of operators try for a piece of the pie. Hopefully, the politicians are through batting around gaming as an important issue like they did back in the 90’s. That is probably wishful thinking.