• Home

Read more about the
Las Vegas 2024 Super
Bowl Streaker!

New Mexico has a stormy gambling past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by Congress in 1989, it seemed like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the Amerindian casino craze. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the case.

The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a panel in 1990 to draft a contract with New Mexico Amerindian tribes. When the task force came to an accord with 2 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 office in 1995, it appeared that Native betting in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the contract with the Indian bands, anti-gambling groups were able to tie the contract up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had out stepped his bounds in signing the compact, thus denying the state of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.

It took the CNA, passed by the New Mexico house, to get the process moving on a full contract between the Government of New Mexico and its Amerindian bands. A decade had been burned for gaming in New Mexico, including Native casino Bingo.

The non-profit Bingo business has gotten bigger since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. That year, New Mexico charity game providers brought in only $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and passed one million dollars in revenues in 2001. Non-profit Bingo earnings have increased steadily since that time. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the biggest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the providers.

Bingo is clearly popular in New Mexico. All kinds of providers look for a bit of the pie. Hopefully, the politicos are done batting over gambling as an important factor like they did in the 1990’s. That’s without doubt wishful thinking.

Log in