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New Mexico has a stormy gaming past. When the IGRA was signed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the Amerindian casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the situation.

The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a working group in 1990 to create a compact with New Mexico Amerindian tribes. When the working group arrived at an agreement with two prominent local tribes a year later, Governor King refused to sign the bargain. He held up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.

When a new governor took over in Nineteen Ninety Five, it appeared that Indian gambling in New Mexico was a certainty. But when the new Governor signed the compact with the American Indian bands, anti-gaming groups were able to tie the deal up in courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had out stepped his bounds in signing the deal, thus costing the state of New Mexico hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.

It took the Compact Negotiation Act, passed by the New Mexico legislature, to get the process moving on a full compact between the State of New Mexico and its Native tribes. A decade had been squandered for gaming in New Mexico, which includes American Indian casino Bingo.

The non-profit Bingo industry has grown since 1999. In that year, New Mexico not for profit game operators brought in just $3,048. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo earnings have grown steadily since then. 2005 witnessed the biggest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the owners.

Bingo is certainly popular in New Mexico. All sorts of providers try for a bit of the action. Hopefully, the politicos are through batting over gaming as a hot button factor like they did in the 1990’s. That is probably wishful thinking.