New Mexico has a rocky gambling past. When the IGRA was signed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, 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 situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a working group in Nineteen Ninety to draft a compact with New Mexico American Indian tribes. When the panel arrived at an accord with 2 prominent 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 office in 1995, it seemed that American Indian gaming in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the compact with the Indian tribes, anti-gambling groups were able to tie the accord up in courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had out stepped his bounds in signing the accord, thus costing the state of New Mexico hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It took the Compact Negotiation Act, passed by the New Mexico legislature, to get the ball rolling on a full accord between the Government of New Mexico and its Native bands. A decade had been burned for gaming in New Mexico, which includes Indian casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo business has increased since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico not for profit game operators acquired only $3,048 in revenues. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars in 2001. Not for profit Bingo earnings have increased constantly since then. Two Thousand and Five saw the largest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the operators.
Bingo is categorically popular in New Mexico. All sorts of operators try for a slice of the action. Hopefully, the politicos are through batting over gaming as an important matter like they did back in the 1990’s. That’s most likely wishful thinking.
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