New Mexico has a complex gaming background. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by the House in 1989, it looked like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the Indian casino craze. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a working group in Nineteen Ninety to discuss a compact with New Mexico American Indian tribes. When the working group came to an agreement with 2 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 office in 1995, it seemed that Indian gaming in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the compact with the Amerindian tribes, anti-gambling forces were able to hold the deal up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had out stepped his bounds in signing the accord, thus costing 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, signed by the New Mexico house, to get the ball rolling on a full compact between the Government of New Mexico and its Indian bands. A decade had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, which includes Amerindian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo industry has increased from Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico non-profit game providers brought in only $3,048 in revenues. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded one million dollars in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo revenues have increased constantly since then. Two Thousand and Five saw the biggest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the providers.
Bingo is categorically popular in New Mexico. All sorts of owners try for a piece of the pie. Hopefully, the politicians are through batting around gambling as a hot button factor like they did back in the 90’s. That’s probably hopeful thinking.