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New Mexico has a stormy gambling background. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by the House in 1989, it seemed like New Mexico would be one of the states to get on the Amerindian casino bandwagon. Politics assured that would not be the case.

The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a working group in Nineteen Ninety to negotiate a compact with New Mexico Indian bands. When the task force came to an accord with two prominent local tribes 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 1995, it seemed that Indian gambling in New Mexico was a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the compact with the Native tribes, anti-gaming groups were able to tie the accord up in courts. A New Mexico court ruled that Governor Johnson had out stepped his bounds in signing the accord, thereby costing the state of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees 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 compact between the State of New Mexico and its Indian tribes. A decade had been burned for gaming in New Mexico, including Amerindian casino Bingo.

The nonprofit Bingo business has increased from 1999. In that year, New Mexico charity game operators acquired only $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed one million dollars in 2001. Non-profit Bingo revenues have grown steadily since that time. Two Thousand and Five saw the biggest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the operators.

Bingo is categorically popular in New Mexico. All types of providers look for a bit of the pie. Hopefully, the politicians are done batting around gambling as a key matter like they did back in the 90’s. That is most likely wishful thinking.

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