Bingo in New Mexico
New Mexico has a rocky gaming background. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to cash in on the American Indian casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a working group in Nineteen Ninety to negotiate an accord with New Mexico Amerindian tribes. When the task force arrived at an agreement with 2 prominent local bands a year later, Governor King declined to sign the agreement. He would hold up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took office in 1995, it seemed that Indian betting in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the compact with the Native tribes, anti-gaming forces were able to hold the deal up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had out stepped his bounds in signing the accord, thus 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 contract amongst the Government of New Mexico and its Indian bands. Ten years had been lost for gambling in New Mexico, including American Indian casino Bingo.
The non-profit Bingo business has grown from Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico non-profit game operators brought in only $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed one million dollars in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo revenues have increased constantly since then. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the largest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the owners.
Bingo is certainly beloved in New Mexico. All sorts of owners look for a slice of the action. Hopefully, the politicos are done batting around gaming as an important matter like they did in the 90’s. That’s most likely hopeful thinking.