New Mexico Bingo
New Mexico has a stormy gaming background. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it seemed like New Mexico might be one of the states to get on the American Indian casino bandwagon. Politics guaranteed that wouldn’t be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King assembled a panel in 1990 to draft an accord with New Mexico Amerindian tribes. When the working group came to an accord with two big local bands a year later, the Governor declined to sign the agreement. He would hold up a deal until 1994.
When a new governor took over in Nineteen Ninety Five, it seemed that Native gambling in New Mexico was a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the accord with the American Indian tribes, anti-gambling forces were able to tie the deal up in the courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the deal, thereby costing the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It took the Compact Negotiation Act, passed by the New Mexico legislature, to get the process moving on a full contract between the State of New Mexico and its Amerindian bands. A decade had been lost for gaming in New Mexico, including American Indian casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo business has gotten bigger from 1999. That year, New Mexico non-profit game operators acquired only $3,048 in revenues. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and passed one million dollars in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo earnings have grown constantly since then. 2005 saw the largest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the owners.
Bingo is certainly popular in New Mexico. All sorts of owners look for a bit of the action. Hopefully, the politicians are done batting over gaming as a hot button matter like they did in the 1990’s. That’s probably wishful thinking.

