New Mexico has a complex gambling background. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by Congress in 1989, it seemed like New Mexico would be one of the states to cash in on the American Indian casino craze. Politics guaranteed that would not be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a panel in 1990 to discuss a compact with New Mexico Indian tribes. When the task force arrived at an agreement with two important local bands a year later, the Governor refused to sign the bargain. He would hold up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took over in Nineteen Ninety Five, it appeared that Indian wagering in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the compact with the Amerindian tribes, anti-wagering forces were able to tie the deal up in courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing a deal, thereby denying the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It took the Compact Negotiation Act, signed by the New Mexico house, to get the ball rolling on a full compact between the State of New Mexico and its Amerindian tribes. A decade had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, including Indian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo business has grown since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico charity game operators brought in only $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed one million dollars in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo revenues have grown constantly since then. 2005 witnessed the biggest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the owners.
Bingo is categorically popular in New Mexico. All sorts of operators try for a piece of the action. Hopefully, the politicians are through batting around gambling as an important factor like they did back in the 1990’s. That is probably hopeful thinking.
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