Democratic nominee for New Mexico governor Deb Haaland discussed local needs with housing and child welfare advocates and rallied supporters during a Friday, Sept. 18, visit to Roswell.
Haaland met with representatives from the group With Many Hands and staff with Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) during her visit. It was part of “Deb’s Roadrunnin’ Tour,” a three-day series of campaign stops in eight communities. Other stops in the tour that day included Carlsbad and Hobbs.
With Many Hands, a community organization that seeks affordable housing solutions, met with Haaland to discuss their Rehab to Rental program, which is designed to restore properties and provide them to low-income renters. Haaland toured one of the 27 homes the program has rehabbed, located on East Sixth Street, according to Jeneva Martinez, senior organizer for With Many Hands.
Later, Haaland toured the new office of CASA at 200 North Pennsylvania Ave. She was shown a kitchen where at-risk youth receive and learn to prepare food, along with recreation areas and classrooms. CASA’s initiatives to support abused, neglected and at-risk youth were discussed, including efforts at job training, education for expelled students and programs to address childhood trauma.
“What we want to do is give you simple solutions,” Carrie Leigh-Cloutier, executive director of CASA, told Haaland.
Alex Ross | Roswell Tribune
The stop in Roswell comes about two weeks before early voting begins in elections across New Mexico, including the race for governor. Haaland, the former secretary of the interior under former-President Joe Biden, is running against Republican Gregg Hull, the former Rio Rancho mayor, in the Nov. 3 race for governor. The winner will succeed Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who is term limited and will leave office in 2027.
After the tours, Haaland addressed an audience of about 36 supporters at a meet-and-greet in the backroom of Stellar Coffee Co. Sitting in the crowd was Hilda Moreno, 73, who traveled from her home in Artesia to hear Haaland speak. For Moreno, the growing number of data centers — and how they could affect communities in southern New Mexico — is a top issue.
Data centers and whether they should be regulated have become major issues in campaigns across the country, driven by concerns over their impacts on the environment, water supplies and utility costs.
“There is no reason we should have so many of them,” Moreno told the Tribune, noting especially concerned about the strain such facilities could place on natural resources. “I think our resources are very important. I don’t want to lose our water.”
Last year, the Chaves County Board of Commissioners voted 4-1 to approve a special use permit for Zenith Volts Corporation of Wyoming for a possible 300-acre data center near Lake Arthur, 20 miles south of Roswell. The $6 billion, 8,500-acre project would also include a 250-acre battery storage facility and a utility-scale solar field. Construction has not begun on the project.
Mike Espiritu, president and CEO of the Roswell Chaves County Economic Development Corporation, told the Tribune in August that Zenith Volts is still deciding whether to move forward with it.
Haaland vowed at a press conference in Albuquerque Thursday, Sept. 17, to implement a moratorium on data center construction in New Mexico, until guardrails can be put in place on how those centers can operate. She reiterated that pledge in Roswell.
“If I am the next governor of New Mexico, I would sign a moratorium on day one, in an executive order,” she said. The moratorium would remain in place until the Legislature approved regulations on how those centers operate, including requirements that they use renewable energy and operate on a closed-loop system to limit water usage.
Haaland also vowed to “make sure Roswell has what it needs to thrive.” She said several proposals would seek to do that, especially on the education level, such as ensuring students learn to read sooner, expanding outdoor education and encouraging teaching of the trades.
