LAS CRUCES — The races for two seats on the Doña Ana County Commission have turned into a referendum on the massive and controversial data center, Project Jupiter.
Those vying for the seats have described themselves as appalled about how commissioners went about approving record-setting industrial bonds for the project, which has sparked pushback and lawsuits over transparency and environmental issues.
One lawsuit working its way through the courts claims commissioners violated state law in a Sept. 19, 2025, closed-door session where they approved the $165 billion in bonds for Project Jupiter. The now-ousted county manager, Scott Andrews, signed non-disclosure agreements with developers, and has since been replaced by three interim county mangers.
All this comes amidst an audit in May that found systemic accountability and organization failures across county government, specifically related to financial controls, procurement and grant administration. These concerns are now being addressed by an outside fiscal agent.
Project Jupiter comments
The District 1 race is between Democrat Daisy Maldonado, a community organizer, and Republican Samantha Barncastle Salopek, an attorney who comes from a seventh-generation Doña Ana County pecan farming family.
District 3 will see a three-way competition between current District 3 Commissioner Susie Kimble, independent; Democratic write-in candidate and former county manager Julia Brown, and Democratic State Rep. Willie Madrid.
At a candidate forum earlier this month at Temple Beth-El in Las Cruces, Maldonado, Kimble and Brown discussed Project Jupiter, water infrastructure, an at-times contentious relationship with the county sheriff and the county’s problematic May audit.
Barncastle Salopek and Madrid did not attend the forum or respond to The New Mexican’s repeated requests for comment. Madrid does not have a campaign website, and has failed to make other public appearances related to his run.
Josh Bachman/For The New Mexican
Kimble — who was appointed as the District 3 Commissioner by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham in February 2026 to replace former Commissioner Shannon Reynolds — was not present for the controversial Project Jupiter vote.
While Kimble is “not fully opposed to Project Jupiter,” she is “appalled by how the process was done,” she said at the Oct. 14 forum, and has continued to probe developers on their claims.
“I try and get the answers,” Kimble said. “… AI centers are kind of like the Cabbage Patch doll craze. Everybody wants one. Everybody’s trying to build one. … What happens when they’re no longer useful? What happens to the building? What happens to the land?”
Josh Bachman/For The New Mexican
Brown said she has been “horrified” lately by developers’ hedging their claims, referencing Oracle’s recent plan to offset El Paso Electric customers’ utility costs as Project Jupiter developers work to strike a deal with the utility for backup power.
“The Project Jupiter developers seem to be doing a change step every week and changing — or trying to change — everything that they pledged in the beginning,” Brown said at the forum.
Josh Bachman/For The New Mexican
Maldonado has fiercely opposed how Project Jupiter is being carried out through her role as a community organizer.
“When the commission decided not to include community [input], I thought, this is such a betrayal,” Maldonado said at the forum.
Barncastle Salopek seemed to agree in a questionnaire with local TV station KVIA: “Economic development cannot come at the expense of the people who already live here,” she wrote to the station.
Citing historic issues with water quality in Sunland Park, Maldonado said the borderland community has become “a sacrifice zone” with respect to Project Jupiter: “If the water provider in that community cannot provide clean and safe drinking water to customers that had been living there for years, why would they not prioritize industry … over constituents and over customers, just regular everyday people?”
Water watch
With regard to water issues in Southern New Mexico — both in drought and in flood — candidates expressed a need for improved infrastructure.
That can be difficult in the county’s unincorporated colonias, where the county does not regulate water, Maldonado said.
“However, if a project comes in, we could establish an ordinance saying, if you want an industrial project, you can only use this so much water and require reporting and oversight,” she added at the forum.
Private roads present another challenge, as they are outside of the county’s purview, Brown said. But she encouraged greater collaboration with the flood commission, housed in the county building.
Kimble proposed working with desalination plants and New Mexico State University to repurpose water from recent flooding: “We have to capture the water while it’s here because they’re not making any more.”
Harsh county audit
In terms of the scathing audit, the three candidates all agreed that more needed to be done.
“There was a certain county manager that told me we don’t have to worry about it [because] we weren’t here when any of this happened, and I disagreed,” Kimble said at the forum.
While Maldonado said that the county commission “hasn’t conducted enough oversight,” Salopek said at a recent KRWG forum that the commission is following the state auditor’s directives and is “headed in the right direction.”
Brown — whose tenure as county manager included a contentious relationship with former Sheriff Enrique “Kiki” Vigil over a decade ago — tied the audit’s findings to workplace culture.
“One of the things that I contended with back when I was county manager was this environment of retribution, where employees who would bring something to the attention of a supervisor… were dealt with in a ‘I’m going to get you’ kind of fashion,” Brown said. “… There needs to be a more open, harmonious relationship and communication back and forth between the commissioners and the other five elected offices, including the sheriff.”
Maldonado and Kimble said they would also maintain good relations with the sheriff’s office.
“We like to say, ‘nothing about us without us.’ They have to be involved in what you’re building, what you’re doing,” Kimble said.
Julia Gentin is a reporter for The Las Cruces New Mexican, The Santa Fe New Mexican and Searchlight New Mexico through a partnership with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms. She covers the Southern New Mexico region. Learn more about Report for America at reportforamerica.org.
