New Mexico has a complex gaming history. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was signed by Congress in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to get on the Amerindian casino craze. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the situation.

The New Mexico governor Bruce King appointed a panel in Nineteen Ninety to draft a compact with New Mexico Native tribes. When the task force arrived at an accord with 2 important local bands a year later, Governor King declined to sign the bargain. He held up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.

When a new governor took office in Nineteen Ninety Five, it appeared that Indian wagering in New Mexico was a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the compact with the Amerindian tribes, anti-wagering groups were able to hold the contract up in courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the compact, thereby denying the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.

It took the CNA, passed by the New Mexico legislature, to get the process moving on a full accord amongst the Government of New Mexico and its Amerindian tribes. A decade had been burned for gambling in New Mexico, including Native casino Bingo.

The non-profit Bingo industry has increased since 1999. That year, New Mexico charity game operators acquired just $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed one million dollars in 2001. Not for profit Bingo revenues have increased constantly since that time. Two Thousand and Five saw the largest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the providers.

Bingo is clearly popular in New Mexico. All kinds of providers try for a piece of the pie. Hopefully, the politicians are done batting around gambling as an important matter like they did back in the 1990’s. That is probably hopeful thinking.