New Mexico has a stormy gaming past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by the House in 1989, it seemed like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the Native casino craze. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a panel in Nineteen Ninety to negotiate a compact with New Mexico American Indian bands. When the task force came to an accord with two prominent local bands a year later, the Governor refused to sign the bargain. He would hold up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took office in 1995, it seemed that American Indian gaming in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the compact with the Native tribes, anti-gaming groups were able to hold the accord up in the courts. A New Mexico court ruled that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the compact, thus denying the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.
It took the Compact Negotiation Act, signed by the New Mexico legislature, to get the process moving on a full accord amongst the Government of New Mexico and its Native tribes. A decade had been lost for gaming in New Mexico, including Native casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo industry has increased since 1999. In that year, New Mexico non-profit game operators acquired only $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo revenues have grown steadily since that time. 2005 saw the biggest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the providers.
Bingo is apparently favored in New Mexico. All sorts of owners look for a bit of the action. Hopefully, the politicos are done batting over gambling as a key issue like they did back in the 1990’s. That’s probably hopeful thinking.