New Mexico has a bitter gaming background. When the IGRA was passed by the House in 1989, it seemed like New Mexico might be one of the states to cash in on the Indian casino craze. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a working group in 1990 to create a compact with New Mexico Indian tribes. When the task force came to an agreement with two important local bands a year later, the Governor refused to sign the bargain. He held up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took over in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that Indian gambling in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the accord with the American Indian bands, anti-gambling groups were able to tie the deal up in the courts. A New Mexico court ruled that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the accord, therefore denying the state of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It required the Compact Negotiation Act, 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 burned for gaming in New Mexico, including Amerindian casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo industry has gotten bigger since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico charity game providers acquired just $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in 2001. Not for profit Bingo revenues have increased steadily since that time. 2005 witnessed the biggest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the providers.
Bingo is clearly popular in New Mexico. All sorts of operators try for a piece of the action. Hopefully, the politicians are done batting around gaming as a hot button issue like they did back in the 1990’s. That is without doubt hopeful thinking.