Welcome to election 2026 coverage on KRRG Public Media.

We're conducting candidate forums and interviews in contested races around the region on radio, online, and here on television.

I'm KC Counts, and this is the Doña Ana County Board of Commissioners District one candidate forum featuring Democratic candidate Daisy Maldonado and Republican candidate Samantha Barncastle Salopek.

Thank you both for being with us.

Each candidate will have one minute to answer.

Each question will alternate who answers first.

We ask that candidates don't mention each other by name.

The first question will go first to Miss Barncastle Salopek.

What in your background has prepared you to serve as a Dona Ana County Commissioner for district one?

Well, for 18 years I have served as local counsel to a variety of local public bodies in the area, many of whom have agreements with Dona Ana County, work with Dona Ana County, and otherwise serve the local community.

So, as counsel to those entities, I'm uniquely positioned to understand a lot of the public safety, infrastructure, housing, other issues that our community is experiencing.

The other side of that, I'm a water and natural resources attorney.

And if you look outside lately, obviously there's a problem.

So we have water scarcity issues on top of an abundance of water and lack of infrastructure.

We have things like Project Jupiter coming in, more demand on the system, stress from a changing climate.

There's a lot going on, and I have a practice devoted to a lot of those issues as well.

And third and final, I have a special needs doctor who has cerebral palsy and is unable to get her medical care here locally.

And so I would like to work on that issue for children like her and frankly, other children who have basic needs that can't be met here.

All right.

Thank you, Miss Maldonado.

Sure.

Now, for the last two decades, as an NMSU alum, you know, I got a degree in economics.

I've been serving the community as the director of Empowerment Congress.

I've also served as a victim advocate with La Piñon.

I've also done quite a bit of interfaith work and so really what prepares me for this role is really being connected with the community on the ground.

having an understanding of what everyday folks really need from their county government and really understanding where the gaps exist.

And so being able to take my experience and knowledge and then go get to the county commission and really be the voice of the community, right.

And instead of, thinking about private interests, really thinking about how is a county, establishing a community so that it serves every single person, no matter where they live around the county, no matter how much money they have, no matter what background the they may come from, that they will receive the services and resources that they need to thrive here.

All right.

Thank you.

The State Auditor special audit of Dona Ana County highlighted 42 findings of failure in county management and culture that need to be addressed.

What is your opinion of the way the County Commission has responded to the audit, and how, if elected county commissioner, do you plan to work to correct those issues?

Yeah.

I think that the county commission at the moment is, is following the directives that have come down from the state auditor, which is good.

Right?

And so they've taken the steps to establish, an inspector general as well as and, well, they have an internal auditor, but then also the external auditor.

Right.

However, there's still a whole lot more to do.

I've actually, believe it or not, have received phone calls from current county staff who have said, don't mention my name, but this is what's going on here at the county.

And so I would very much like to work with the county staff and management and again, you know, unearth, you know, all the the problems and then work together with county staff, county management to really address them.

So that working at the county is, is really great for its employees.

But then again, we actually serve the community the way we intend to.

Okay.

Thank you.

Miss Barncastle Salopek?

Thank you for the question.

And it's an important one that's hit our county recently because one of the primary issues you hear when you're out on the campaign trail or otherwise in the community and talking to the local community members and leaders, is that the county will get money.

That is supposed to get to their community, and it never gets there, and nobody knows why.

Those of us who understand what it's like to avoid those audit findings.

I have clients who I have represented as general counsel for 18 years, who have never had a single audit finding, and we're very proud of that.

And that's also in Dona Ana County.

So we know what it takes to avoid them.

We know what it takes to shuttle money correctly.

That's what really needs to happen.

And it starts with accountability at the top with the county commission.

The county commission is definitely headed in the right direction.

They need more expertise, though, than what they have currently.

And that's what I plan to bring.

Okay.

The county currently has three acting county managers.

Talk about your hopes for the next county manager and what type of leader you would wish to hire.

Yeah, having an acting county manager is not an abnormal situation.

We've had a situation in the past where I was appointed acting manager of the Elephant Butte Irrigation District.

This is the kind of thing that happens when there's transition, and what comes next is what's really important.

And so taking stock in what the staff and what the county, the personnel who are actually dealing with the problems, have to say in this process will be very important.

I have also received a number of phone calls from staff who I've worked with for a number of years with other governmental entities, and there's a lot of problems that we really need to get to the heart of addressing internally.

You're not going to do that without involvement of the staff.

Staff need to be involved, but there also needs to be accountability at the top.

And we need to find someone who understands our culture here locally.

All right.

Thank you, Miss Maldonado.

Yeah.

Thank you for that question.

I would certainly say where we would start.

Right.

Is looking for a county manager who, who's not just, knows our community, but also from the area.

You know, the borderlands are very unique place, and it's also just it's very different in terms of here in southern New Mexico and do any, any county then northern New Mexico, right north of Socorro, New Mexico, is very different.

And so we definitely need to bring somebody in who has that understanding and is really ready to not only work with the staff, but again, also the community.

You know, that was actually was something that was very disappointing.

from the last county manager who came in, who was brought from out of state and who had a bunch of high hopes.

And after meeting with him, it sounded like, you know, he had a great plan, but he actually did not take the time to get to know where he was living.

And that was a great disappointment.

and so there was really no connection that he had to the local community.

And I think that is probably the cornerstone of what we actually need here in Dona Ana County.

Thank you very much.

How will you address transparency in county government as a county commissioner?

So transparency is probably the cornerstone of one of the reasons why I decided to run for for this position.

And so what I really want to do is be able to provide, you know, all the information that the public is requesting and needs and wants.

Not only in town halls, but newsletters, emailed lists, you know, texting.

But then also I want to let the constituents know that not only and I'm not going to sign an NDA ever, with a company that's trying to get business, you know, work with the county and, receive any kind of funding.

I will also make sure that all of those meetings are explicitly public and that there's no secret meetings, no backroom deals.

and again, that the public is informed of what the county is doing.

All right.

Thank you, Miss Bardencastle Salopek.

Yeah.

So there's what's legally required, and then there's the rest.

Right.

And I tell a lot of my clients, there's transparency and there's openness.

Transparency implies there's still a thin veil between you and whatever you're trying to get to.

Openness implies that you can reach through that window and actually hug someone on the other side.

And I encourage all of my clients, and I will do the same if elected to the county commission to, seek openness, to seek to go above and beyond what the law requires, and inspection of public records act, open meetings, act.

Those are the baseline.

Those are not necessarily what we need to be doing to keep our cities and counties informed.

That's exactly the cornerstone of what I would do.

I would essentially set up the county's business the same way I have set up the other clients that I have worked for throughout time, who have never seen similar struggles to what the county is dealing with right now.

And it's not simply about open versus closed doors meetings.

Some meetings are legally required to be closed to the public.

It's about following the law, and I will do that.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

District one is, you could say, comprised of some very different types of communities, spanning the district.

What priorities do you have to address the unique and varied needs of district one constituents?

Yeah.

Listen, I'm an eighth generation New Mexican.

My family established Dona Ana in Dona Ana County, and, my family has lived and grown here throughout that time for the last 200 years.

When it comes to knowing our community, my family has a strong history of public service in the community, as do I. And, when it comes to knowing what each individual smaller community needs, it's about communication and getting out on the ground, and it's no different.

whether you're in office or you're in a position like mine where you simply want to help, you know, getting out and doing, for example, pro bono work for, parents of children who can't get medical attention that they need here, just helping them with forms, getting to know the issues and being around and being present.

That's exactly how I will handle it.

Exactly how I'm currently handling it.

Miss Maldonado yeah you're right.

District one.

It has many different communities and and different needs in each one of them.

And initially, what I would like to do is when I'm commissioner to look at, you know, speak with again the different departments, look at the infrastructure needs and start with the projects that were promised, you know, so long ago, but that have never been completed.

So from the roads to the bridges to, you know, flood mitigation, what what actually are the needs?

And then again, start with those who have been waiting the longest.

and then from there, you know, really look at each community and their unique needs and then again, prioritize how the county can support and addressing it, as well as work with the city of Las Cruces, the probably the city of Anthony, and other of the smaller municipalities, collaboratively, so that we can address the issues, you know, in a more holistic fashion.

Okay.

Thank you.

And now I'd like to address the giant planet in the room, Project Jupiter.

your thoughts on dealing with this project and other data centers that may impact residents of your district?

Yeah, well, and probably everybody knows, my stance on Project Jupiter, and I've been opposed to it since the very beginning, because of how it got passed with, NDAs and deals behind closed doors, as well as just how much negative impact and consequences that this project is going to have on the front frontline community.

So those in Sunland Park in Santa Rosa.

And so how I want to deal with it is we need a moratorium.

We a moratorium here in Dona Ana County, other counties around the state have passed them, because they want to ensure that if we welcome data centers into New Mexico, that they don't come in and exploit our resources and exploit or labor and really just try and take advantage of New Mexico and New Mexicans.

All right.

Thank you, Miss Barncastle Salopek.

Yeah.

Project Jupiter is sucking a lot of the air out of the room, despite other issues being much more massive in terms of things like access to health care and our community access to critical infrastructure.

But it is because it's an all eyes on data centers kind of environment right now.

it's worth noting, though, that these types of structures are not new.

They've been around since the 70s and 80s when we started computing.

they varied in size and water demand over time and in, in effect, the water demand we're seeing off of Project Jupiter, at least at this point, is minimal compared to, for example, some of the golf courses we have around.

So I would like to start by getting our priorities straight in our county.

We are very business unfriendly.

I would like to be more welcoming to businesses rather than less welcoming.

I'm not going to make any predetermination about projects that I'm not fully up to speed on, but what I will say is that the Project Jupiter people have agreed to sit down and chat, have agreed to talk about their project, and answer questions related to it that were put together by members of our community and so I'll be pursuing that as we move forward.

All right.

Thank you.

Recent commission meetings have been contentious, with residents turning out to voice, sometimes loudly, their opposition to the project.

How do you believe these situations should be handled?

Yeah, that's a really difficult situation because when people get to that point of anger, they're not being heard anymore, like they want to be heard and so it makes them even more angry.

And it makes people act out even more.

The first thing I would do is try to restore decorum to the process.

It's very important.

you know, children nowadays don't understand, and I know I sound old saying that they don't understand why we show up to board meetings in suits.

They don't understand why we don't sit on our cell phones while we're in a meeting.

They don't understand those things.

And so really, restoring decorum would be my first priority.

ensuring that the public is feeling like they're hurt, not just showing them that there's a process and calling it, but actually ensuring that they're being heard.

And if three minutes isn't enough, during a county commission meeting and setting up other opportunities to make that happen, consistent opportunities as well.

So the first thing I would do is try to diffuse the situation with rules.

Okay.

Thank you, Miss Maldonado.

Yeah.

I think that before any decisions get made, I think that the.

As a county commission to take a step back.

Right.

And why have folks responded in the way they have and partially right.

It does have to do with not being heard and not being listened to, but also because of the mistrust that the county Commission has put forward about how they make decisions around how they, you know, established meetings in the, in the past.

and so there's there's been a lot of misinformation and some, I would hate to say, even some of even some, some deception.

And so initially, I would say that we would again return to the rules.

What does the county code say about public input and then offer people opportunities outside of that?

And we can have meetings in the evenings where there's, you know, it's not necessarily a public meeting.

but that's an opportunity for people to come in.

And so a, a meeting and a not so like not a hearing, but in any case, an opportunity for people to speak and hear from their commissioners.

Right.

Thank you very thank you.

What opportunities for economic development and new, well-paying jobs do you believe should be pursued?

Yeah.

Well, I think that although, you know, I've been critiqued around like, because I hate the data center, then I hate economic development, but that's actually not the case.

I think that the county can certainly be working with, again, the city of Las Cruces, the other municipalities as well as Nmsu, to really look at opportunities that we can finance for folks here, entrepreneurs on the ground, as well as really look at our medical and health care system, because that is a huge gap.

And that's something that we can use, you know, our public financing to actually try and establish some, you know, more services for community members here that are really in need.

Okay.

Thank you.

Yeah.

The county is currently under leveraging the amount of federal funds that are potentially out there for infrastructure development within our local area.

Things like basic road updates, street lighting, community parks, community health centers, if we were better leveraging those opportunities, for example, the Biden era, we saw the Inflation Reduction Act pump a massive amount of money into our economy for exactly those things.

We're seeing the same thing under the Trump administration, regardless of the president.

We're understanding that the West needs infrastructure and that we have companies out here that are poised to do that.

So it's not necessarily that we have to bring in big tech to change our culture here in southern New Mexico.

We could simply improve on what we have using a massive amount of federal dollars to keep people employed at higher davis-bacon wages for a long time to come.

There's also a variety of other opportunities.

I'm out of time, but I would love to chat about those another time.

All right.

Thank you very much.

How can the County Commission support efforts to protect dwindling water supplies in the region and make sure residents have safe, clean drinking water?

Yeah, water supply is a huge issue first and foremost all throughout the West, not just for our county.

And it's one of the primary issues I work on in my daily professional life.

Water supply for our small communities, colonias, private development, but also for farms and people who feed America.

Essentially, the city of Las Cruces would not be here if it was not for the Elephant Butte Irrigation District and the farmers who brought water into this area.

So the two systems are interconnected and they rise and fall together, essentially.

So better collaboration, more intergovernmental discussions, more pulling down of that large infrastructure funding, ability that's out there.

And, while I was at Biden as their general counsel, we put together a massive plan on infrastructure improvements that would bring in a bunch more water to the area.

We were in discussions with the county at the time, and those discussions have since dried up because of some of the issues you're seeing at the county lately.

I would most certainly revise those immediately.

All right.

Thank you.

And Miss Maldonado.

Yeah.

When it comes to providing clean and safe drinking water, that's a human right.

And so I think it needs to be up of the utmost priority for Dona Ana County.

and I definitely there's there's been trouble, between Dona Ana County and other municipalities and other water providers, on how exactly they're going to do that.

Right.

But we they're being governed by both state and federal law on how exactly they're going to do that.

and many times they're just they're not following that.

So I really think that the county needs to take up the mantle and work with the water providers, and make sure that essentially that they're following the rules and that safe and clean drinking water is being delivered to every single person that lives here in Dona Ana County.

All right.

Thank you.

Earlier this year, county commissioners tabled a proposal for a memorandum of understanding with the Mescalero Apache Tribe to jointly manage an amphitheater on or near the county fairgrounds.

Please share your opinion on this issue.

You know, lend back to tribes.

I would 100% support.

And if a tribe wants to come into our county and they, want to do so pursuing with again with the state land office, you know, doing an exchange, I think that that needs to take place among the tribe, the state land office, as well as the county commission and then the surrounding community.

So I think that, you know, the MoU maybe it was.

I'm not really sure.

Good idea.

Bad idea.

But what I would say is, I think more people needed to be at the table to have that discussion and that they needed to decide collectively what was the most fair thing, to do for that option.

Okay.

Thank you.

Land use issues are huge for the county.

That's essentially the crux of what the county government does.

And, these are the kinds of things that the county is often proposed, not just by outside governmental entities, but entities that also live and work within the county's borders.

And I started out saying the county used to be a good partner.

It hasn't been for a little while now, and I would like to get back to being a good partner.

The first thing I would do is take a hard look at that MOU through the lens of the history of my practice.

I work very well with tribal communities throughout the West.

The Elephant Butte Irrigation District and several local communities have worked very well with local tribal communities in in building infrastructure or otherwise giving access to property that is sacred or otherwise protected for some reason or another.

what I try to encourage people to do is find a problem solving mechanism and not make anything a zero sum game, and that's what I would do this.

That's how I would approach this situation.

First look okay.

Thank you.

We just have a couple of minutes remaining.

So with that time left, I'd like for you both to offer any closing thoughts or additional information about yourself or your campaign that you think voters should know, starting with you, Miss Barncastle Salopek.

Yeah, I'm a very collaborative person.

I like to solve problems.

I'm not necessarily the kind of person who wants to create additional problems.

but I'm also a litigator, and I know the kinds of things that the county could be doing to better protect our community.

And so it's that expertise and that experience that I bring to this role that I would hope to better our community, across the board, not just County Commission District one, but there are health care facilities needed in the North and south valleys in, the chaparral area.

We've got to be looking all throughout the county, pulling together all the small communities and making sure we're working together to pull down all of the massive federal funding to improve our system, improve our situation locally while we still have the time.

I'm the best candidate suited to do that.

All right.

Thank you and Miss Maldonado.

Yeah, I would say that my 20 years of experience working in the community and especially again on the ground, working with everyday folks, right?

They feel so, distant from the decision making table.

And so I would like voters to know very specifically that I'm going to be their voice at the county commission.

And I want to make, bridge right.

Bridge their experience with the county commission, because as it stands right now, many folks that are get, get to sit in those seats and are voted into office, really make decisions based on, you know, maybe, research or their what their own opinions are, but they're really not listening to the community and really addressing the needs of everyday folks.

And that's what I'm going to be doing when I'm there.

County commissioner.

All right.

Well, Democratic candidate for county commissioner in district one, Daisy Maldonado, thank you so much for being with us.

Thank you.

And Republican candidate for board of County commissioners and district one, Samantha Barncastle Salopek.

Thank you for joining us for our forum today.

Thank you for having me.

We appreciate having you.

And thank you for watching.

Election 2026 coverage on KRWG Public Media.

You can find our forums and interviews with candidates in contested races around the region at KRWG.org.

Early voting in New Mexico has begun and Election day is November 3rd.

And.