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New Mexico has a complex gambling history. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed 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 guaranteed that would not be the situation.

The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a task force in 1990 to create a compact with New Mexico Amerindian bands. When the working group arrived at an agreement with 2 prominent local tribes a year later, Governor King refused to sign the bargain. He held up a deal until 1994.

When a new governor took office in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that Native gambling in New Mexico was a certainty. But when Governor Gary Johnson passed the compact with the Indian tribes, anti-gaming groups were able to tie the deal up in courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing a deal, therefore costing the state 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 house, to get the ball rolling on a full compact between the Government of New Mexico and its Native bands. 10 years had been lost for gaming in New Mexico, which includes Native casino Bingo.

The non-profit Bingo business has gotten bigger since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. That year, New Mexico non-profit game operators acquired just $3,048. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Non-profit Bingo revenues have increased constantly since then. Two Thousand and Five witnessed the greatest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the providers.

Bingo is apparently popular in New Mexico. All types of providers look for a bit of the action. Hopefully, the politicos are done batting over gambling as a key factor like they did back in the 1990's. That's probably wishful thinking.