New Mexico Bingo
Posted in Bingo on 03/16/2026 11:25 pm by EileenNew Mexico has a bitter gaming past. 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 wouldn’t be the case.
The New Mexico governor Bruce King announced a working group in Nineteen Ninety to discuss a contract with New Mexico Amerindian tribes. When the working group came to an agreement with two prominent local bands a year later, Governor King refused to sign the agreement. He held up a deal until Nineteen Ninety Four.
When a new governor took over in Nineteen Ninety Five, it appeared that Native gambling in New Mexico was a certainty. But when the new Governor signed the compact with the Indian bands, anti-gaming groups were able to tie the contract up in courts. A New Mexico court found that Governor Johnson had overstepped his bounds in signing the accord, thus denying the government of New Mexico many hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing revenues over the next several years.
It took the CNA, signed by the New Mexico house, to get the ball rolling on a full contract amongst the Government of New Mexico and its Indian bands. A decade had been squandered for gaming in New Mexico, which includes Native casino Bingo.
The nonprofit Bingo business has gotten bigger since Nineteen Ninety-Nine. In that year, New Mexico not for profit game owners acquired just $3,048 in revenues. This number grew to $725,150 in 2000, and surpassed a million dollars in 2001. Not for profit Bingo earnings have grown steadily since that time. Two Thousand and Five saw the biggest year, with $1,233,289 earned by the operators.
Bingo is apparently favored in New Mexico. All sorts of owners look for a slice of the pie. Hopefully, the politicians are done batting over gaming as a key matter like they did in the 1990’s. That is probably wishful thinking.
