New Mexico has a complex gambling background. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by Congress in 1989, it looked like New Mexico might be one of the states to cash in on the Native casino craze. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a task force in 1990 to draft a compact with New Mexico Native tribes. When the task force arrived at an agreement with 2 important local tribes 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 1995, it appeared that American Indian gaming in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the compact with the Native bands, anti-gambling forces were able to tie the deal up in courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the compact, thus 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, passed by the New Mexico house, to get the ball rolling on a full compact amongst the State of New Mexico and its Native tribes. A decade had been squandered for gaming in New Mexico, which includes Amerindian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo business has grown since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico charity game owners acquired just $3,048. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo earnings have grown steadily since then. 2005 saw the greatest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the providers.
Bingo is certainly beloved in New Mexico. All types of operators try for a slice of the pie. Hopefully, the politicos are through batting around gambling as a key issue like they did in the 1990’s. That’s most likely wishful thinking.