New Mexico has a complex gambling past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the Indian casino craze. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a working group in Nineteen Ninety to draft a contract with New Mexico Native tribes. When the panel came to an accord with two prominent local tribes a year later, Governor King refused to sign the agreement. He held up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took office in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that Amerindian betting in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the compact with the Amerindian bands, anti-gaming forces were able to tie the contract up in the courts. A New Mexico court ruled that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the deal, thereby denying the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.
It took the Compact Negotiation Act, passed by the New Mexico legislature, to get the ball rolling on a full contract amongst the State of New Mexico and its Indian bands. A decade had been squandered for gambling in New Mexico, including American Indian casino Bingo.
The not for profit Bingo industry has grown from 1999. In that year, New Mexico charity game owners acquired only $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in 2001. Non-profit Bingo revenues have increased steadily since then. 2005 witnessed the largest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the operators.
Bingo is clearly popular in New Mexico. All types of providers try for a bit of the pie. Hopefully, the politicians are through batting over gambling as a key matter like they did in the 90’s. That is most likely hopeful thinking.
