Public Lands Commissioner candidates meet Las Cruces voters

LAS CRUCES — Four candidates in the running to be New Mexico’s next Public Lands Commissioner gathered for a public forum organized by a coalition of local conservation groups Wednesday in Las Cruces.

In a high school auditorium on the eastern edge of town near the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument, Democratic primary candidates Juan Sanchez, Jonas Moya and Matthew McQueen joined Republican Michael Perry, the lone Republican in the field.

Stephanie Garcia Richard, a Democrat late in her second term as commissioner, is constitutionally barred from seeking a third term.

As the candidates provided two-minute answers to questions from a moderator, they interacted cordially and presented views that often overlapped. The strongest contrasts among them were in their résumés and prior experience in policy and politics.

Moya is a Tucumcari-area rancher who served as executive director of the New Mexico Farm Service Agency during the Biden administration and is a past director of the New Mexico Cattle Growers’ Association.

Valencia County native Juan Sanchez, who grew up on a ranch himself, is a former political director for U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich. Sanchez has also worked for the state Acequia Commission and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

State Rep. Matthew McQueen, D-Galisteo, has represented House District 50 since 2015 and chairs the House Energy, Environment and Natural Resources Committee. McQueen touted his 30-year legal career, where he specializes in real property law, in addition to his legislative work.

Chaves County Commissioner Michael Perry of Roswell, who has no Republican rival in the primaries next June, frequently evoked his experience first as a game warden and then in the leadership of the state Department of Game and Fish. He also has experience in the State Land Office itself, where he worked under former Commissioner Aubrey Dunn.

The office is responsible for over 9 million surface acres of state trust land and 13 million subsurface mineral acres, managing leases that harvest revenue for public schools, hospitals and other beneficiaries in New Mexico. The office brought in $2.56 billion in the 2024 fiscal year, of which more than 90% was derived from the oil and gas industry royalties.

The candidates fielded questions on topics including how to diversify revenue so the state’s budget is not dependent on petroleum business cycles; recreational use of public land and enforcement of lease terms and access for hiking, fishing and hunting and camping; habitat management; and whether they would seek stronger enforcement authority for the agency.

The candidates agreed broadly that the office’s approach to enforcing lease terms and ensuring good stewardship of lands used for grazing or mineral extraction would begin with crafting leases well and obtaining compliance through education, multiagency collaboration or, if need be, the courts.

Moya said he would seek input from industry as well as conservation and outdoor recreation advocates on “how we manage our lands correctly so that we are fighting against the effects of climate change and that we are producing energy in a safe manner.”

The candidates all acknowledged the value of land to New Mexicans beyond deriving maximum revenue from trust lands.

“We need to make sure that we’re not just looking at dollars on a spreadsheet, but we’re looking at … the value of being able to go out in the outdoors and explore the outdoors,” Sanchez said.

There were two questions about land exchanges as Garcia Richard’s office is negotiating a land swap with the federal Bureau of Land Management to transfer about 85,000 state-owned acres of minerals and surface area adjacent to the national monument into federal domain.

Perry said an additional consideration with such swaps should be potential loss of federal payments in lieu of taxes, an important revenue stream for county services in areas with large tracts of public land. “If you mess that up, (counties) have to cut corners elsewhere,” he said.

The most contentious issue the candidates were asked to address was a possible land exchange with the Mescalero Apache Tribe involving a parcel of land close to Tortugas Mountain, also known as “A” Mountain, in Las Cruces.

The State Land Office is gathering public input as Garcia Richard considers the deal, which would be the third exchange restoring ancestral territory to Native American tribes or pueblos during her time in office. The proposal has aroused some local opposition, particularly among neighboring residents concerned about potential commercial development.

All four candidates demurred, as the question — which had not been provided to them in advance — focused on a statutory detail they said would require study.

Although the state depends on oil and gas for its budget, New Mexico’s Energy Transition Act mandates renewable energy standards with a zero-carbon deadline for all utilities and cooperatives by 2050. The candidates all acknowledged a hotter and drier climate and addressed how they would balance leases for mineral extraction versus other uses such as commercial development, housing, grazing or management of fish and wildlife.

“We’re slowly shifting from one energy source to another,” McQueen said. “For the most part, that shift is going to be economic, not political. The economics of renewables are out-competing the economics of oil and gas, just like the economics of oil and gas out-competed the economics of coal.”

The primary election will take place June 2, 2026, and the general election is set to follow on Nov. 3.