New Mexico has a stormy gambling past. When the IGRA was passed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it seemed like New Mexico might be one of the states to cash in on the Amerindian casino bandwagon. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the situation.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a task force in Nineteen Ninety to discuss a contract with New Mexico Indian bands. When the panel arrived at an agreement with 2 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 appeared that American Indian betting in New Mexico was a certainty. But when the new Governor signed the accord with the Indian tribes, anti-gaming groups were able to hold the accord up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing a deal, therefore denying the government of New Mexico hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It took the Compact Negotiation Act, signed by the New Mexico government, to get the ball rolling on a full accord between the Government of New Mexico and its Indian tribes. Ten years had been burned for gaming in New Mexico, including Native casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo business has gotten bigger since 1999. That year, New Mexico not for profit game owners acquired only $3,048. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded one million dollars in revenues in 2001. Not for profit Bingo revenues have grown constantly since that time. 2005 saw the greatest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the operators.
Bingo is categorically popular in New Mexico. All sorts of owners look for a bit of the action. Hopefully, the politicians are done batting over gambling as an important issue like they did back in the 1990’s. That’s most likely wishful thinking.
This entry was posted on January 23, 2026, 4:25 am and is filed under Bingo. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.