New Mexico has a complex gaming background. When the IGRA was signed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it seemed like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the Native casino craze. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a working group in 1990 to negotiate a contract with New Mexico American Indian tribes. When the working group came to an agreement with two prominent local bands a year later, the Governor declined to sign the agreement. He would hold up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took office in 1995, it seemed that Native gambling in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the accord with the Indian bands, anti-gambling groups were able to hold the deal up in courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had out stepped his bounds in signing a deal, thus costing the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It took the Compact Negotiation Act, signed by the New Mexico government, to get the ball rolling on a full contract amongst the Government of New Mexico and its Indian tribes. Ten years had been squandered for gambling in New Mexico, including Amerindian casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo business has gotten bigger since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico not for profit game operators acquired just $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed one million dollars in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo revenues have grown steadily since then. 2005 saw the biggest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the owners.
Bingo is apparently favored in New Mexico. All kinds of providers try for a bit of the pie. Hopefully, the politicos are through batting around gaming as an important matter like they did back in the 1990’s. That is probably wishful thinking.