New Mexico has a rocky gaming background. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to cash in on the Amerindian casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that would not be the case.

The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a panel in 1990 to negotiate an accord with New Mexico Native tribes. When the panel arrived at an agreement with two important local bands a year later, the Governor refused 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 gambling in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the accord with the Indian bands, anti-gambling groups were able to tie the contract up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing a deal, thereby denying the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.

It took the CNA, passed by the New Mexico legislature, to get the process moving on a full compact between the State of New Mexico and its Indian bands. A decade had been lost for gaming in New Mexico, including Indian casino Bingo.

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

Bingo is clearly popular in New Mexico. All types of operators try for a bit of the pie. Hopefully, the politicos are done batting around gambling as an important matter like they did back in the 1990’s. That’s probably hopeful thinking.