New Mexico has a stormy gambling past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by Congress in 1989, it seemed like New Mexico would be one of the states to get on the Amerindian casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that would not be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a working group in 1990 to draft a contract with New Mexico Amerindian tribes. When the panel came to an agreement with two important local tribes a year later, the Governor declined to sign the bargain. He held up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took over in 1995, it seemed that Native gambling in New Mexico was now a certainty. But when the new Governor signed the compact with the American Indian tribes, anti-gaming forces were able to hold the deal up in courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had out stepped his bounds in signing the compact, thus denying the government of New Mexico hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.
It took the Compact Negotiation Act, passed by the New Mexico house, to get the ball rolling on a full compact between the Government of New Mexico and its Indian tribes. A decade had been squandered for gambling in New Mexico, which includes American Indian casino Bingo.
The not for profit Bingo business has gotten bigger since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. That year, New Mexico charity game operators brought in only $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and passed one million dollars in revenues in 2001. Not for profit Bingo revenues have grown steadily since then. 2005 saw the biggest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the providers.
Bingo is apparently popular in New Mexico. All kinds of providers try for a bit of the action. Hopefully, the politicians are done batting over gambling as a key issue like they did in the 90’s. That is most likely hopeful thinking.
This entry was posted on June 7, 2026, 9:25 pm and is filed under Casino. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.