New Mexico has a complex gaming past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to cash in on the Indian casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that would not be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a panel in Nineteen Ninety to negotiate an accord with New Mexico Native tribes. When the panel arrived at an agreement with two prominent local bands a year later, the Governor declined 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 Indian gambling in New Mexico was a certainty. But when the new Governor signed the accord with the Amerindian tribes, anti-gaming groups were able to hold the deal up in the courts. A New Mexico court ruled that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing the deal, thereby denying the state of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It took the CNA, passed by the New Mexico government, to get the ball rolling on a full contract between the Government of New Mexico and its Indian bands. 10 years had been burned for gaming in New Mexico, which includes American Indian casino Bingo.
The not for profit Bingo industry has gotten bigger since 1999. That year, New Mexico not for profit game operators brought in just $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo earnings have increased constantly since then. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the largest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the operators.
Bingo is categorically popular in New Mexico. All sorts of operators look for a bit of the pie. Hopefully, the politicos are done batting around gambling as an important factor like they did back in the 1990’s. That’s without doubt hopeful thinking.
