New Mexico has a rocky gaming past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it seemed like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the Amerindian casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a panel in Nineteen Ninety to draft a compact with New Mexico Native tribes. When the panel arrived at an accord with 2 prominent local tribes a year later, Governor King declined to sign the bargain. He held up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took office in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that American Indian betting in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the accord with the American Indian tribes, anti-gambling forces were able to hold the deal up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing the deal, thus denying the state of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees 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 compact between the State of New Mexico and its Amerindian tribes. A decade had been lost for gambling in New Mexico, including Native casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo industry has gotten bigger from 1999. In that year, New Mexico charity game providers acquired just $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Not for profit Bingo revenues have grown constantly since then. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the biggest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the operators.
Bingo is certainly favored in New Mexico. All sorts of owners look for a slice of the pie. With hope, the politicos are through batting around gaming as an important factor like they did in the 1990’s. That’s without doubt hopeful thinking.