[ English ]

New Mexico has a bitter gambling background. When the IGRA was passed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the American Indian casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that would not be the case.

The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a working group in Nineteen Ninety to draft a compact with New Mexico Amerindian bands. When the panel came to an accord with two big local tribes a year later, the Governor declined to sign the bargain. He held up a deal until 1994.

When a new governor took office in 1995, it appeared that Amerindian wagering in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the compact with the American Indian bands, anti-gaming groups were able to tie the accord up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing the accord, thereby denying the state of New Mexico hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.

It required the CNA, passed by the New Mexico government, to get the process moving on a full accord amongst the State of New Mexico and its Native tribes. Ten years had been burned for gaming in New Mexico, including Amerindian casino Bingo.

The non-profit Bingo industry has gotten bigger since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico not for profit game operators acquired just $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in 2001. Non-profit Bingo revenues have increased steadily since then. 2005 witnessed the greatest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the providers.

Bingo is apparently popular in New Mexico. All types of providers try for a bit of the pie. Hopefully, the politicians are through batting around gambling as an important issue like they did in the 90’s. That is without doubt hopeful thinking.