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New Mexico has a bitter gambling past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it seemed like New Mexico might be one of the states to cash in on the Native casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the case.

The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a panel in Nineteen Ninety to draft an accord with New Mexico Amerindian bands. When the task force came to an agreement with 2 big local tribes a year later, Governor King refused to sign the agreement. He would hold up a deal until 1994.

When a new governor took over in 1995, it seemed that Native betting in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the contract with the Amerindian bands, anti-gaming groups were able to hold the contract up in the courts. A New Mexico court ruled that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing the accord, thereby denying the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.

It took the CNA, signed by the New Mexico house, to get the ball rolling on a full accord between the Government of New Mexico and its Indian tribes. 10 years had been burned for gaming in New Mexico, which includes American Indian casino Bingo.

The nonprofit Bingo business has increased from 1999. That year, New Mexico non-profit game operators acquired just $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and passed a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo revenues have increased constantly since that time. Two Thousand and Five saw the biggest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the operators.

Bingo is clearly popular in New Mexico. All kinds of owners try for a slice of the action. Hopefully, the politicos are through batting around gambling as a hot button issue like they did back in the 1990’s. That is probably wishful thinking.