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New Mexico has a stormy gambling history. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by the House in 1989, it seemed like New Mexico would be one of the states to get on the American Indian casino craze. Politics guaranteed that would not be the case.

The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a working group in Nineteen Ninety to discuss an accord with New Mexico Indian bands. When the working group arrived at an agreement with 2 prominent local bands a year later, Governor King declined to sign the bargain. He would hold up a deal until 1994.

When a new governor took office in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that American Indian betting in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the compact with the American Indian bands, anti-gaming forces were able to tie the accord up in the courts. A New Mexico court ruled that Governor Johnson 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 required the CNA, passed by the New Mexico legislature, to get the ball rolling on a full accord between the State of New Mexico and its American Indian bands. A decade had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, which includes Native casino Bingo.

The nonprofit Bingo industry has gotten bigger since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico not for profit game owners brought in only $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo revenues have grown constantly since then. Two Thousand and Five saw the biggest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the providers.

Bingo is clearly popular in New Mexico. All kinds of owners try for a piece of the action. Hopefully, the politicians are through batting around gaming as an important matter like they did back in the 1990’s. That’s without doubt wishful thinking.