New Mexico has a bitter gaming past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by Congress in 1989, it seemed 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 announced a working group in Nineteen Ninety to discuss a contract with New Mexico American Indian bands. When the task force came to an agreement with 2 prominent local tribes 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 the new Governor passed the contract with the Amerindian bands, anti-gaming groups were able to tie the contract up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the accord, thereby costing the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.
It took the CNA, passed by the New Mexico house, to get the process moving on a full compact amongst the State of New Mexico and its Indian tribes. Ten years had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, including Native casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo industry has increased since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico charity game operators acquired only $3,048. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Not for profit Bingo revenues have increased constantly since that time. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the largest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the owners.
Bingo is certainly popular in New Mexico. All kinds of providers look for a slice of the action. Hopefully, the politicos are through batting over gambling as an important matter like they did back in the 1990’s. That is probably wishful thinking.