Bingo in New Mexico

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New Mexico has a stormy gaming background. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it seemed like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the Native casino craze. Politics assured that would not be the case.

The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a task force in 1990 to draft a compact with New Mexico Indian bands. When the working group arrived at an accord with two prominent local tribes a year later, Governor King declined to sign the bargain. He held up a deal until 1994.

When a new governor took office in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that Amerindian betting in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the compact with the American Indian bands, anti-gambling groups were able to tie the deal up in the courts. A New Mexico court ruled that the Governor had out stepped his bounds in signing the accord, therefore denying the state of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.

It required the Compact Negotiation Act, passed by the New Mexico legislature, to get the ball rolling on a full accord between the State of New Mexico and its Native bands. A decade had been squandered for gaming in New Mexico, which includes Indian casino Bingo.

The nonprofit Bingo business has gotten bigger since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. That year, New Mexico charity game operators acquired only $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed one million dollars in revenues in 2001. Non-profit Bingo revenues have increased steadily since then. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the largest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the operators.

Bingo is certainly popular in New Mexico. All kinds of owners look for a bit of the pie. Hopefully, the politicos are done batting around gambling as an important matter like they did back in the 90’s. That is without doubt hopeful thinking.