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New Mexico has a stormy gambling past. When the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act was passed by the House in Nineteen Eighty Nine, it looked like New Mexico would be one of the states to get on the Amerindian casino craze. Politics guaranteed that wouldn't be the situation.

The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a working group in 1990 to negotiate a contract with New Mexico Amerindian bands. When the panel arrived at an agreement with two important local bands a year later, the Governor declined to sign the bargain. He would hold up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.

When a new governor took office in Nineteen Ninety Five, it appeared that American Indian gambling in New Mexico was a certainty. But when the new Governor passed the accord with the Indian tribes, anti-gaming forces were able to hold the accord up in courts. A New Mexico court found that the Governor had overstepped his bounds in signing the accord, thus denying the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing fees over the next several years.

It required the CNA, passed by the New Mexico house, to get the process moving on a full compact between the State of New Mexico and its American Indian tribes. A decade had been lost for gambling in New Mexico, including Native casino Bingo.

The nonprofit Bingo industry has gotten bigger since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico not for profit game owners acquired just $3,048. That climbed to $725,150 in 2000, and exceeded a million dollars in revenues in 2001. Nonprofit Bingo revenues have increased constantly since then. Two Thousand and Five saw the biggest year, with $1,233,289 grossed by the operators.

Bingo is certainly favored in New Mexico. All kinds of operators look for a piece of the pie. Hopefully, the politicos are done batting over gambling as a key matter like they did back in the 90's. That's probably wishful thinking.