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New Mexico has a stormy gaming background. When the IGRA was passed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it seemed like New Mexico might be one of the states to cash in on the Native casino bandwagon. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the situation.

The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a working group in Nineteen Ninety to draft an accord with New Mexico Amerindian tribes. When the task force arrived at an agreement with two important local bands 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 Native gaming in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor signed the contract with the Indian tribes, anti-gaming forces were able to hold the contract up in the courts. A New Mexico court ruled that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing a 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 process moving on a full contract between the State of New Mexico and its Amerindian bands. A decade had been squandered for gaming in New Mexico, which includes Amerindian casino Bingo.

The nonprofit Bingo industry has grown from 1999. That year, New Mexico not for profit game operators brought in just $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo earnings have increased constantly since that time. Two Thousand and Five saw the biggest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the operators.

Bingo is clearly beloved in New Mexico. All sorts of operators look for a piece of the pie. Hopefully, the politicians are done batting around gambling as an important matter like they did back in the 1990’s. That is most likely wishful thinking.

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