New Mexico has a stormy gambling background. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to get on the Native casino craze. Politics guaranteed that would not be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a panel in 1990 to draft an accord with New Mexico Amerindian bands. When the panel came to an accord with 2 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 appeared that Native betting in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the accord with the Amerindian bands, anti-gaming forces were able to tie the deal up in courts. A New Mexico court ruled that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the deal, thus 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 amongst the State of New Mexico and its Amerindian bands. A decade had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, including Amerindian casino Bingo.
The not for profit Bingo industry has grown from Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico not for profit game owners brought in only $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed one million dollars in 2001. Non-profit Bingo revenues have grown steadily since that time. Two Thousand and Five saw the largest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the operators.
Bingo is certainly favored in New Mexico. All kinds of providers look for a bit of the pie. With hope, the politicians are done batting around gambling as a key issue like they did back in the 1990’s. That is most likely wishful thinking.