A water attorney and a longtime community organizer are facing off for the Doña Ana County Commission District 1 seat in Tuesday's general election, with the $165 billion Project Jupiter data center deal looming over nearly every exchange between them. Republican Samantha Barncastle Salopek and Democrat Daisy Maldonado are competing to represent a district that stretches west, northwest and southwest of Las Cruces, covering colonias including San Miguel, Fairacres, Mesquite and La Mesa.
District 1 is currently represented by Commissioner Christopher Schaljo-Hernandez, according to Organ Mountain News, which has tracked the race as part of its coverage of the county's commission contests. The outlet reports that Barncastle Salopek is a Las Cruces-based water and natural-resources attorney who began practicing law in 2014. At a candidate forum covered by KFOX14/CBS4, Barncastle Salopek said she wants to bring that legal background directly into the commission seat.
Speaking at a forum broadcast by PBS, Barncastle Salopek described her record representing local governments across the region. “For 18 years I have served as local counsel to a variety of local public bodies in the area,” she said in the forum. Maldonado, for her part, pointed to a different kind of experience built over two decades of grassroots work.
Two Résumés, Two Visions for the Seat
According to KVIA, Maldonado has spent the last two decades serving the local community, from working as a sexual-assault victim advocate to engaging in interfaith work to most recently leading the Empowerment Congress. At the PBS-aired forum, Maldonado said she has supported communities on the front lines and helped residents learn to speak for themselves, framing that grassroots work as the quality that sets her apart from her opponent.
The contrast in backgrounds has become a central feature of the campaign, with Barncastle Salopek emphasizing legal credentials earned representing southern New Mexico local governments throughout her career, while Maldonado leans on nonprofit and advocacy credentials built over roughly twenty years. Neither candidate currently holds the seat; the winner will replace Commissioner Christopher Fernandez, who is not seeking re-election, per KFOX14/CBS4's reporting.
Project Jupiter Dominates the Debate
No issue has shaped the District 1 race more than Project Jupiter, the massive data center project that county commissioners approved in a 4-1 vote last September, authorizing $165 billion in Industrial Revenue Bonds, the same Organ Mountain News report states. Maldonado told the Las Cruces Bulletin she would not have cast that yes vote. “I would not have voted yes in September 2025,” she said, according to the Las Cruces Bulletin.
Maldonado has argued the approval moved too fast and skipped scrutiny that the project deserved. “Project Jupiter was approved in three weeks, without independent environmental review, without meaningful community input,” she told the Bulletin. She has also pledged a harder line on future deals, telling KVIA, “I will not sign any non-disclosure agreements nor engage in any private dialogue with any company, industry or any party who will seek approval on a matter before the Board of County Commissioners,” and adding that large-scale industrial projects, including AI data centers and power plants, should not win approval if they are found to negatively impact the community.
Doña Ana County has said the Board's prior authorization of the bonds was based on information from project developers, including plans to limit impacts on local water supplies, according to a notice posted by Doña Ana County. The county's statement does not address any court ruling or resolve a legal challenge to the project. The Santa Fe New Mexican has described the broader stakes bluntly, reporting that the races for two seats on the county commission have turned into a referendum on the data center project.
Early Voting Surges Ahead of Election Day
The debate over Project Jupiter is playing out as turnout climbs across Doña Ana County. Early voting opened Oct. 6 at the county Government Center on North Motel Boulevard and ran weekdays through the end of the day Thursday, per Organ Mountain News. As of Thursday, the county had recorded 34,555 ballots cast, including 28,097 early in-person ballots and 6,458 absentee ballots, the outlet reported separately.
That total marked a jump of 25,475 ballots since Oct. 19, when the county had logged just 9,080 votes. Same-day registrations also climbed sharply, rising to 538 by Thursday from 65 on Oct. 19, an increase of 473, according to the same Organ Mountain News tally. The report cautioned that these figures reflect voters' party registrations, not their actual selections, and cannot be used to determine which candidate is ahead in the District 1 race or any other contest on the ballot.
Voters in District 1 and across Doña Ana County head to the polls Tuesday to settle the contest between Barncastle Salopek and Maldonado, part of broader midterm election coverage across New Mexico. Whoever wins will take over a seat shaped as much by the Project Jupiter fight as by the district's sprawling mix of colonias and unincorporated communities west of Las Cruces.
