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New Mexico has a rocky gambling past. When the IGRA was signed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the Amerindian casino bandwagon. Politics assured that wouldn’t be the situation.

The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a working group in Nineteen Ninety to draft an accord with New Mexico Indian bands. When the task force came to an accord with 2 prominent local bands a year later, Governor King declined to sign the bargain. He held up a deal until 1994.

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

It required the Compact Negotiation Act, signed by the New Mexico house, to get the ball rolling on a full accord amongst the State of New Mexico and its Native bands. A decade had been squandered for gambling in New Mexico, which includes Indian casino Bingo.

The nonprofit Bingo business has gotten bigger since 1999. In that year, New Mexico non-profit game operators brought in just $3,048. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and passed one million dollars in revenues in 2001. Non-profit Bingo revenues have grown steadily since that time. Two Thousand and Five saw the largest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the owners.

Bingo is apparently popular in New Mexico. All sorts of providers look for a bit of the pie. Hopefully, the politicos are done batting around gambling as a hot button factor like they did in the 1990’s. That is probably wishful thinking.