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New Mexico has a stormy gaming 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 American Indian casino bandwagon. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the situation.

The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a panel in 1990 to draft a compact with New Mexico Native tribes. When the task force came to an agreement with two important local tribes a year later, the Governor declined to sign the bargain. He would hold up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.

When a new governor took office in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that Native wagering in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson signed the compact with the American Indian tribes, anti-wagering forces were able to hold the contract up in courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing a deal, thus 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 legislature, to get the process moving on a full contract between the Government of New Mexico and its Indian bands. A decade had been squandered for gambling in New Mexico, which includes Native casino Bingo.

The non-profit Bingo industry has increased since 1999. That year, New Mexico non-profit game owners brought in just $3,048 in revenues. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed one million dollars in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo revenues have grown constantly since then. Two Thousand and Five saw the greatest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the operators.

Bingo is certainly popular in New Mexico. All kinds of owners look for a slice of the action. Hopefully, the politicos are through batting around gambling as an important matter like they did in the 1990’s. That’s without doubt wishful thinking.