New Mexico has a stormy gambling history. When the IGRA was signed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the Amerindian casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that would not be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a working group in 1990 to negotiate an accord with New Mexico Amerindian bands. When the panel arrived at an accord with two big local tribes a year later, the Governor declined to sign the bargain. He held up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took over in Nineteen Ninety Five, it appeared that Amerindian gaming in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the compact with the American Indian bands, anti-gambling groups were able to tie the deal up in courts. A New Mexico court ruled that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the compact, therefore denying the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It required the CNA, signed by the New Mexico legislature, to get the process moving on a full compact between the Government of New Mexico and its American Indian tribes. A decade had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, including Indian casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo industry has grown since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico not for profit game providers acquired just $3,048 in revenues. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo revenues have increased constantly since that time. Two Thousand and Five saw the largest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the operators.
Bingo is categorically popular in New Mexico. All types of owners try for a bit of the pie. Hopefully, the politicos are through batting around gambling as a hot button issue like they did in the 1990’s. That’s probably wishful thinking.