New Mexico has a complex gaming past. When the IGRA was passed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to cash in on the Amerindian casino bandwagon. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a task force in Nineteen Ninety to draft an accord with New Mexico Native tribes. When the panel came to an accord with two important local bands a year later, Governor King refused to sign the bargain. He would hold up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took over in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that Amerindian gaming in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the contract with the Native bands, anti-gaming forces were able to tie the contract up in the courts. A New Mexico court ruled that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the compact, thereby denying the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It took the CNA, signed by the New Mexico government, to get the process moving on a full accord between the Government of New Mexico and its Amerindian tribes. A decade had been lost for gambling in New Mexico, including Native casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo business has increased since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico not for profit game owners brought in only $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo revenues have grown steadily since that time. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the largest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the providers.
Bingo is certainly popular in New Mexico. All kinds of operators look for a piece of the action. Hopefully, the politicians are done batting over gaming as a hot button matter like they did in the 90’s. That is probably wishful thinking.
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