New Mexico has a stormy gambling background. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to cash in on the Native casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that would not be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a task force in Nineteen Ninety to draft a contract with New Mexico Native tribes. When the working group came to an accord with two big local tribes a year later, the Governor declined to sign the agreement. He held up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took office in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that Native gaming in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the contract with the Native tribes, anti-gambling forces were able to hold the deal up in courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had out stepped his bounds in signing the compact, therefore costing the state of New Mexico many 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 contract between the Government of New Mexico and its Indian bands. A decade had been burned for gaming in New Mexico, which includes American Indian casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo business has increased from 1999. That year, New Mexico non-profit game operators acquired only $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Non-profit Bingo revenues have increased steadily since that time. Two Thousand and Five saw the greatest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the operators.
Bingo is certainly popular in New Mexico. All kinds of owners try for a bit of the action. Hopefully, the politicians are done batting over gaming as a key factor like they did in the 90’s. That is probably wishful thinking.