New Mexico has a stormy gambling past. When the IGRA was signed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it seemed like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the Amerindian casino craze. Politics guaranteed that would not be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a panel in Nineteen Ninety to negotiate an accord with New Mexico Native tribes. When the working group arrived at an agreement with two prominent local tribes a year later, Governor King declined to sign the agreement. He held up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took over in Nineteen Ninety Five, it appeared that Native betting in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the accord with the Native bands, anti-gaming groups were able to hold the deal up in courts. A New Mexico court ruled that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing the compact, thus denying the government 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 Indian bands. A decade had been burned for gaming in New Mexico, including Amerindian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo business has gotten bigger from Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico charity game owners acquired only $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars in 2001. Not for profit Bingo revenues have increased constantly since that time. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the largest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the providers.
Bingo is apparently favored in New Mexico. All sorts of providers look for a slice of the pie. With hope, the politicos are through batting around gaming as a key issue like they did in the 90’s. That is probably wishful thinking.