New Mexico has a bitter gaming past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it seemed like New Mexico would be one of the states to cash in on the American Indian casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the case.
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 accord with 2 important local tribes a year later, Governor King refused to sign the bargain. He would hold up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took office in Nineteen Ninety Five, it appeared that Indian betting in New Mexico was a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the accord with the Indian tribes, anti-gaming groups were able to hold the accord up in courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had out stepped his bounds in signing the deal, thus costing the government of New Mexico hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees 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 between the State of New Mexico and its American Indian tribes. A decade had been lost for gambling in New Mexico, which includes Indian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo business has grown since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. That year, New Mexico non-profit game operators acquired only $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and passed one million dollars in revenues in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo revenues have increased steadily since then. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the biggest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the providers.
Bingo is clearly favored in New Mexico. All sorts of operators look for a bit of the action. Hopefully, the politicians are through batting around gaming as a hot button issue like they did in the 1990’s. That is probably wishful thinking.
This entry was posted on May 14, 2025, 7:25 pm and is filed under Bingo. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.