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New Mexico has a bitter gaming history. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the Indian casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that would not be the case.

The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a task force in 1990 to negotiate a contract with New Mexico Native bands. When the task force arrived at an agreement with two big local tribes a year later, Governor King refused to sign the agreement. He would hold up a deal until 1994.

When a new governor took over in 1995, it seemed that American Indian gaming in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the compact with the Amerindian bands, anti-gambling groups were able to hold the deal up in the courts. A New Mexico court ruled that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing the deal, thereby costing the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.

It required the Compact Negotiation Act, passed by the New Mexico government, to get the ball rolling on a full contract amongst the Government of New Mexico and its Native bands. A decade had been lost for gambling in New Mexico, including Indian casino Bingo.

The nonprofit Bingo business has gotten bigger since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico charity game owners acquired only $3,048. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and passed one million dollars in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo revenues have increased steadily since then. Two Thousand and Five saw the largest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the owners.

Bingo is certainly favored in New Mexico. All types of operators try for a piece of the action. Hopefully, the politicians are done batting around gambling as a hot button issue like they did in the 90’s. That’s probably wishful thinking.