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New Mexico has a rocky gaming history. When the IGRA was passed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, 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 announced a working group in Nineteen Ninety to discuss a contract with New Mexico Indian tribes. When the panel arrived at an accord with two important local bands a year later, the Governor refused to sign the bargain. He would hold up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.

When a new governor took over in 1995, it seemed that American Indian gaming in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the compact with the Amerindian bands, 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 the deal, thus denying the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.

It took the CNA, signed by the New Mexico government, to get the ball rolling on a full accord between the State of New Mexico and its American Indian tribes. A decade had been lost for gambling in New Mexico, which includes Native casino Bingo.

The non-profit Bingo business has grown from Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico not for profit game owners acquired only $3,048. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in 2001. Non-profit Bingo earnings have increased constantly since that time. 2005 saw the greatest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the operators.

Bingo is apparently favored in New Mexico. All sorts of operators look for a slice of the action. Hopefully, the politicos are done batting around gaming as a hot button issue like they did back in the 1990’s. That’s probably wishful thinking.