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New Mexico has a rocky gambling background. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by the House in 1989, it looked like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the Amerindian casino craze. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the situation.

The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a panel in Nineteen Ninety to discuss an accord with New Mexico Indian tribes. When the task force arrived at an accord with two big local tribes a year later, Governor King refused to sign the agreement. He would hold up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.

When a new governor took office in 1995, it appeared that Amerindian gaming in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the accord with the Indian tribes, anti-gaming forces were able to hold the accord up in the courts. A New Mexico court found 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 revenues over the next several years.

It took the Compact Negotiation Act, signed by the New Mexico government, to get the process moving on a full contract between the State of New Mexico and its Indian bands. A decade had been squandered for gambling in New Mexico, including Indian casino Bingo.

The non-profit Bingo business has gotten bigger since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico not for profit game operators acquired just $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and passed one million dollars in 2001. Non-profit Bingo earnings have grown constantly since then. Two Thousand and Five saw the largest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the providers.

Bingo is apparently popular in New Mexico. All sorts of operators try for a slice of the pie. With hope, the politicians are through batting around gambling as a key factor like they did in the 1990’s. That is without doubt wishful thinking.