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New Mexico has a bitter gambling background. When the IGRA was signed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the Native casino craze. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the case.

The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a task force in Nineteen Ninety to discuss a compact with New Mexico Indian bands. When the task force arrived at an agreement with two big local tribes a year later, Governor King refused to sign the bargain. He held up a deal until 1994.

When a new governor took over in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that Indian gaming in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the compact with the Amerindian bands, anti-wagering groups were able to tie the contract up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor 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 required the Compact Negotiation Act, signed by the New Mexico house, 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, which includes Amerindian casino Bingo.

The nonprofit Bingo industry has gotten bigger from Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico not for profit game operators brought in only $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo revenues have increased constantly since then. Two Thousand and Five saw the largest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the operators.

Bingo is apparently beloved in New Mexico. All kinds of owners try for a bit of the action. Hopefully, the politicos are done batting around gambling as an important matter like they did back in the 90’s. That is most likely wishful thinking.

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