New Mexico has a bitter gambling background. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to cash in on the Amerindian casino bandwagon. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a task force in Nineteen Ninety to negotiate an accord with New Mexico American Indian tribes. When the panel arrived at an agreement with 2 prominent local bands a year later, Governor King declined to sign the bargain. He would hold up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took office in 1995, it seemed that Native gambling in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the compact with the Native bands, anti-wagering groups were able to hold the contract up in courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had out stepped his bounds in signing a deal, thereby denying the government 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 government, to get the ball rolling on a full accord between the Government of New Mexico and its Amerindian tribes. A decade had been lost for gambling in New Mexico, including Native casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo business has grown since 1999. That year, New Mexico non-profit game operators brought in just $3,048. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and passed one million dollars in revenues in 2001. Not for profit Bingo revenues have increased constantly since then. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the greatest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the operators.
Bingo is apparently popular in New Mexico. All types of owners look for a slice of the action. Hopefully, the politicians are through batting over gambling as a key factor like they did in the 1990’s. That is probably wishful thinking.