New Mexico has a rocky gambling past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the Amerindian casino bandwagon. Politics assured that would not be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a working group in Nineteen Ninety to create a contract with New Mexico Indian bands. When the task force came to an agreement with two big local tribes a year later, Governor King declined to sign the bargain. He held up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took over in 1995, it seemed that Indian gambling in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the accord with the Native tribes, anti-gaming groups were able to tie the deal up in the courts. A New Mexico court ruled that Governor Johnson had out stepped his bounds in signing the compact, therefore denying the state of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.
It required the CNA, signed by the New Mexico government, to get the process moving on a full accord between the Government of New Mexico and its Amerindian tribes. Ten years had been squandered for gambling in New Mexico, which includes Native casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo industry has gotten bigger since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. That year, New Mexico charity game operators brought in only $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded one million dollars in revenues in 2001. Non-profit Bingo revenues have increased steadily since then. 2005 witnessed the biggest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the operators.
Bingo is clearly favored in New Mexico. All sorts of operators look for a bit of the action. Hopefully, the politicians are done batting around gambling as a hot button issue like they did in the 90’s. That is probably hopeful thinking.