New Mexico has a bitter gaming background. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it seemed like New Mexico would be one of the states to cash in on the American Indian casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a working group in 1990 to negotiate a contract with New Mexico Indian tribes. When the task force arrived at an accord with two important local tribes a year later, the Governor refused to sign the agreement. He would hold up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took office in 1995, it appeared that Native wagering in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the accord with the Indian tribes, anti-wagering groups were able to hold the accord up in courts. A New Mexico court ruled that Governor Johnson had out stepped his bounds in signing the deal, thus denying the state of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.
It took the Compact Negotiation Act, passed by the New Mexico government, to get the process moving on a full accord amongst the State of New Mexico and its Indian tribes. A decade had been squandered for gaming in New Mexico, including Amerindian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo business has increased since 1999. In that year, New Mexico charity game operators brought in only $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Non-profit Bingo revenues have grown steadily since then. Two Thousand and Five saw the biggest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the operators.
Bingo is apparently favored in New Mexico. All sorts of owners try for a slice of the pie. With hope, the politicians are done batting over gaming as an important factor like they did in the 1990’s. That is probably wishful thinking.