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New Mexico has a stormy gaming background. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the Amerindian casino craze. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the situation.

The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a panel in Nineteen Ninety to create a compact with New Mexico American Indian bands. When the working group came to an accord with two big local bands a year later, Governor King refused to sign the agreement. He would hold up a deal until 1994.

When a new governor took office in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that American Indian gaming in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor signed the accord with the Amerindian tribes, anti-gambling groups were able to tie the deal up in courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing the compact, thus costing 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 government, to get the ball rolling on a full contract amongst the Government of New Mexico and its Indian bands. A decade had been lost for gaming in New Mexico, including American Indian casino Bingo.

The nonprofit Bingo industry has grown from Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico non-profit game providers brought in only $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in 2001. Not for profit Bingo revenues have increased constantly since that time. 2005 saw the largest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the operators.

Bingo is apparently popular in New Mexico. All types of operators look for a slice of the pie. Hopefully, the politicians are done batting over gaming as a hot button issue like they did back in the 1990’s. That’s probably wishful thinking.

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