Bingo in New Mexico
New Mexico has a stormy gambling background. When the IGRA was passed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the American Indian casino bandwagon. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a task force in Nineteen Ninety to create a compact with New Mexico Indian bands. When the task force arrived at an agreement with 2 important local bands a year later, the Governor refused to sign the bargain. He held up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took over in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that Amerindian gaming in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the compact with the Amerindian bands, anti-gaming groups were able to tie the accord up in the courts. A New Mexico court ruled that Governor Johnson had out stepped his bounds in signing the compact, thus costing the state 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 government, to get the ball rolling on a full contract between the State of New Mexico and its Native tribes. A decade had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, which includes Native casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo industry has grown since 1999. That year, New Mexico not for profit game operators acquired just $3,048 in revenues. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Not for profit Bingo revenues have increased constantly since then. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the greatest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the operators.
Bingo is clearly beloved in New Mexico. All kinds of providers try for a piece of the pie. With hope, the politicians are done batting around gaming as a key matter like they did in the 1990’s. That is most likely wishful thinking.