New Mexico has a stormy gaming past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to cash in on the American Indian casino bandwagon. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a working group in 1990 to negotiate an accord with New Mexico Amerindian tribes. When the task force arrived at an accord with 2 important local tribes a year later, the Governor refused to sign the bargain. He held up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took office in Nineteen Ninety Five, it appeared that American Indian betting in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the accord with the Native bands, anti-gambling groups were able to tie the deal up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had out stepped his bounds in signing the deal, thereby denying the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.
It took the CNA, passed by the New Mexico government, to get the ball rolling on a full contract between the State of New Mexico and its American Indian bands. A decade had been burned for gaming in New Mexico, including Indian casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo business has increased from 1999. In that year, New Mexico charity game owners brought in only $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo revenues have grown constantly since then. 2005 witnessed the largest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the owners.
Bingo is clearly popular in New Mexico. All sorts of providers look for a bit of the action. With hope, the politicians are through batting around gaming as an important matter like they did back in the 1990’s. That’s probably hopeful thinking.