[ English ]

New Mexico has a rocky gambling past. When the IGRA was passed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico might be one of the states to cash in on the Indian casino craze. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the situation.

The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a task force in 1990 to negotiate an accord with New Mexico American Indian tribes. When the working group came to an agreement with two big local bands a year later, Governor King declined to sign the agreement. He held up a deal until 1994.

When a new governor took over in 1995, it appeared that Native betting in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the compact with the American Indian tribes, anti-gambling groups were able to tie the deal up in courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the compact, thus denying the state of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.

It took the Compact Negotiation Act, passed by the New Mexico government, to get the ball rolling on a full accord amongst the Government of New Mexico and its American Indian bands. A decade had been lost for gambling in New Mexico, which includes Native casino Bingo.

The nonprofit Bingo industry has grown from Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico charity game operators acquired only $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Non-profit Bingo earnings have increased constantly since then. 2005 witnessed the largest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the providers.

Bingo is apparently beloved in New Mexico. All sorts of owners look for a piece of the pie. Hopefully, the politicos are done batting over gaming as a hot button issue like they did back in the 1990’s. That’s without doubt wishful thinking.