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New Mexico has a stormy gambling past. When the IGRA was signed by the House in 1989, it looked like New Mexico might be one of the states to cash in on the American Indian casino craze. Politics assured that would not be the situation.

The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a working group in 1990 to discuss a compact with New Mexico Amerindian bands. When the panel came to an agreement with 2 important local tribes a year later, Governor King refused 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 Amerindian gaming in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the accord with the Native tribes, anti-gambling forces were able to hold the deal up in courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the accord, thus denying the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.

It required the Compact Negotiation Act, signed by the New Mexico house, to get the process moving on a full contract amongst the Government of New Mexico and its Indian bands. A decade had been burned for gaming in New Mexico, including American Indian casino Bingo.

The nonprofit Bingo industry has gotten bigger from 1999. That year, New Mexico charity game providers acquired just $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed one million dollars in revenues in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo revenues have grown constantly since that time. 2005 saw the biggest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the providers.

Bingo is clearly popular in New Mexico. All sorts of owners try for a piece of the action. Hopefully, the politicians are through batting over gambling as an important matter like they did in the 1990’s. That is most likely hopeful thinking.

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