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New Mexico has a stormy gaming 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 Amerindian casino craze. Politics guaranteed that would not be the situation.

The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a task force in 1990 to create a compact with New Mexico American Indian tribes. When the task force arrived at an agreement with two important local tribes 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 Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that Amerindian gaming in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the accord with the Native bands, anti-wagering forces were able to tie the deal up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing a deal, therefore denying the government 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 house, to get the ball rolling on a full contract amongst the Government of New Mexico and its Indian bands. A decade had been squandered for gaming in New Mexico, including Native casino Bingo.

The non-profit Bingo industry has grown from Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico charity game operators brought in only $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo revenues have increased steadily since that time. Two Thousand and Five saw the biggest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the providers.

Bingo is apparently popular in New Mexico. All sorts of operators look for a slice of the action. Hopefully, the politicos are done batting around gaming as a key factor like they did in the 90’s. That’s without doubt hopeful thinking.