New Mexico has a stormy gaming background. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it seemed like New Mexico might be one of the states to cash in on the American Indian casino craze. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a working group in Nineteen Ninety to draft an accord with New Mexico Indian tribes. When the panel arrived at an agreement with 2 important local tribes a year later, Governor King refused to sign the bargain. He would hold up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took over in 1995, it seemed that Amerindian betting in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the compact with the Amerindian tribes, anti-gambling groups were able to hold the accord up in courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had out stepped his bounds in signing the accord, thereby denying the state of New Mexico hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.
It required the Compact Negotiation Act, signed by the New Mexico legislature, to get the ball rolling on a full accord between the Government of New Mexico and its Native tribes. A decade had been squandered for gambling in New Mexico, including Native casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo industry has grown from Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico charity game operators acquired just $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo revenues have increased constantly since that time. 2005 witnessed the greatest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the providers.
Bingo is apparently beloved in New Mexico. All kinds of operators try for a slice of the pie. Hopefully, the politicians are through batting over gambling as a key issue like they did in the 1990’s. That is probably hopeful thinking.