Bingo in New Mexico
New Mexico has a rocky gaming past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by the House in 1989, it looked like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the Native casino bandwagon. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a working group in Nineteen Ninety to draft a contract with New Mexico Amerindian tribes. When the working group arrived at an accord with 2 big local tribes a year later, the Governor refused to sign the agreement. He would hold up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took office in 1995, it appeared that Native gambling in New Mexico was a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the compact with the Native bands, anti-wagering groups were able to hold the deal up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing the compact, thereby costing the state 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 legislature, to get the ball rolling on a full compact amongst the State of New Mexico and its American Indian bands. A decade had been squandered for gambling in New Mexico, including Indian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo industry has gotten bigger since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. That year, New Mexico not for profit game operators brought in only $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed one million dollars in 2001. Not for profit Bingo revenues have grown steadily since that time. 2005 witnessed the biggest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the operators.
Bingo is certainly popular in New Mexico. All kinds of operators try for a slice of the action. Hopefully, the politicos are done batting around gambling as a key issue like they did in the 1990’s. That’s without doubt hopeful thinking.