New Mexico has a rocky gambling past. When the IGRA was signed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to get on the Native casino bandwagon. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a task force in 1990 to discuss a compact with New Mexico Indian tribes. When the working group arrived at an accord with two big local bands a year later, Governor King declined to sign the agreement. He would hold up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took office in Nineteen Ninety Five, it appeared that American Indian gaming in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the compact with the American Indian bands, anti-gaming forces were able to tie the contract up in the courts. A New Mexico court ruled that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing the compact, thus denying the state of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues 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 compact amongst the State of New Mexico and its Indian bands. A decade had been lost for gaming in New Mexico, including American Indian casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo business has gotten bigger from 1999. In that year, New Mexico non-profit game owners brought in only $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed one million dollars in 2001. Non-profit Bingo revenues have increased steadily since then. Two Thousand and Five saw the largest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the operators.
Bingo is categorically favored in New Mexico. All types of providers look for a piece of the action. Hopefully, the politicians are through batting around gaming as a hot button issue like they did in the 1990’s. That is without doubt hopeful thinking.