New Mexico has a stormy gambling past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to get on the Native casino craze. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a working group in 1990 to negotiate an accord with New Mexico Native bands. When the panel arrived at an agreement with two big local bands a year later, the Governor refused to sign the bargain. He would hold up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took office in 1995, it seemed that Amerindian gaming in New Mexico was a certainty. But when the new Governor signed the accord with the Amerindian bands, anti-gambling groups were able to hold the contract up in courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the accord, thereby denying the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It took the CNA, passed by the New Mexico government, to get the process moving on a full compact between the State of New Mexico and its Native tribes. A decade had been burned for gaming in New Mexico, which includes Amerindian casino Bingo.
The not for profit Bingo industry has gotten bigger since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico charity game owners acquired just $3,048 in revenues. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Non-profit Bingo revenues have grown steadily since that time. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the largest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the owners.
Bingo is categorically beloved in New Mexico. All sorts of owners look for a bit of the action. Hopefully, the politicos are done batting over gambling as a key matter like they did in the 1990’s. That’s most likely hopeful thinking.