New Mexico has a stormy gambling history. When the IGRA was signed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to get on the Indian casino craze. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a working group in Nineteen Ninety to create a compact with New Mexico Indian tribes. When the task force arrived at an accord with two prominent local bands a year later, the Governor refused to sign the bargain. He would hold up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took office in 1995, it seemed that Amerindian wagering in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the accord with the Amerindian bands, anti-gambling groups were able to hold the deal up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the deal, thereby denying 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 house, to get the ball rolling on a full compact amongst the Government of New Mexico and its American Indian tribes. A decade had been squandered for gambling in New Mexico, including American Indian casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo business has increased since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico charity game providers brought in only $3,048. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed one million dollars in revenues in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo revenues have increased constantly since that time. Two Thousand and Five saw the biggest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the owners.
Bingo is categorically favored in New Mexico. All types of owners try for a bit of the pie. Hopefully, the politicians are done batting over gambling as a hot button matter like they did in the 90’s. That is without doubt wishful thinking.