New Mexico has a bitter gambling past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by the House in 1989, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to get on the Amerindian casino craze. Politics assured that would not be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a task force in Nineteen Ninety to draft an accord with New Mexico Indian bands. When the working group came to an accord with 2 prominent local bands a year later, Governor King refused to sign the bargain. He would hold up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took over in 1995, it appeared that Amerindian gaming in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the accord with the Native bands, anti-gaming forces were able to tie the deal up in courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the accord, therefore costing the government 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 legislature, to get the process moving on a full accord between the Government of New Mexico and its American Indian bands. A decade had been lost for gaming in New Mexico, including Amerindian casino Bingo.
The not for profit Bingo business has increased since 1999. That year, New Mexico non-profit game operators brought in only $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 steadily since that time. 2005 witnessed the greatest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the providers.
Bingo is clearly popular in New Mexico. All kinds of owners try for a piece of the action. Hopefully, the politicos are done batting over gaming as an important matter like they did in the 90’s. That’s probably wishful thinking.