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New Mexico has a rocky gambling background. When the IGRA was passed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to cash in on the Native casino craze. Politics guaranteed that would not be the case.

The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a panel in 1990 to create a compact with New Mexico Indian tribes. When the working group arrived at an accord with 2 prominent local tribes a year later, the Governor declined to sign the agreement. He held up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.

When a new governor took office in 1995, it seemed that American Indian wagering in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the compact with the American Indian tribes, anti-wagering forces were able to hold the deal up in courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the accord, therefore 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, signed by the New Mexico government, to get the ball rolling on a full accord between the Government of New Mexico and its Indian bands. A decade had been burned for gaming in New Mexico, including Native casino Bingo.

The non-profit Bingo industry has grown from 1999. That year, New Mexico not for profit game providers acquired just $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and passed one million dollars in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo revenues have increased constantly since that time. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the greatest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the providers.

Bingo is certainly popular in New Mexico. All sorts of owners try for a bit of the action. Hopefully, the politicians are done batting over gaming as an important factor like they did in the 1990's. That's probably wishful thinking.