Give the Money Back, Deb

The campaign of Deb Haaland, the Democratic nominee for governor in NM, has been taking huge sums of cash from Oracle, the company behind the Project Jupiter data center, despite voter hatred of it

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Somewhere in Deb Haaland’s latest campaign finance report, tucked among the thousands of small-dollar donations from teachers and retirees and people who gave what they could, sits a check for $12,400 from Oracle America. It arrived on August 26, 2026. Oracle is one of the companies building Project Jupiter, the Oracle-and-OpenAI data center rising out of the parched desert near Santa Teresa — the most controversial industrial project in New Mexico right now, and arguably the thirstiest. Searchlight New Mexico and the Santa Fe New Mexican both reported on the public campaign finance filing this week. And it shows yet again that these days New Mexico’s powerful Democrats have developed a noxious talent for quietly siding with billionaire interests instead of the interests of the citizens they purport to “represent.”

The $12,400 is only the visible tip of the Oracle iceberg made of New Mexico’s scarce water. At least $74,800 more flowed to Haaland from people whose names, jobs and addresses match the top leadership of Oracle and of Clayco, the firm building Jupiter — several giving the legal maximum, two of Oracle’s own top executives among them. Add it up and you get at least $87,200 from the company at the center of Project Jupiter and the people who run it. Those same donors gave Haaland’s Republican opponent, Gregg Hull, nothing at all. Hull, like a good Republican, happens to like data centers, and he likes them openly. Haaland, meanwhile, gives speeches where she appears to side with the people, who hate data centers, then takes campaign donations from them.

Let me tell you a little about Project Jupiter. Three million square feet. A power appetite that, by the state’s own estimates, could put more greenhouse gas into our sky than Albuquerque, Las Cruces and Santa Fe combined. A thirst for freshwater so large that in August the New Mexico Supreme Court ordered the state to stop letting Jupiter drink from a particular well while the courts sort out whether that was ever legal. The same court paused the air-quality hearing for the gas plant meant to power the thing. Construction is barreling ahead anyway — twenty-six percent finished — on the buildings that happen not to need the permits a court just froze.

This is a company that already spent $3.44 million on an advertising campaign to soften up New Mexicans and, the state’s Ethics Commission found, to nudge the Environment Department toward approving that air permit — a campaign the commission called likely the largest lobbying ad blitz ever disclosed in this state, and one Oracle got around to disclosing only after it got caught. So when Oracle writes a candidate a check, assume Oracle has done the math. Oracle always does the math.

Here is where it gets awkward, because Deb Haaland is not supposed to be Oracle’s candidate. At a debate in May she said she believes “very strongly that data centers don’t have the best interests of our community at heart.” Her campaign says she supports a moratorium on new large-scale data centers and that a “data center accountability plan” is on the way. I take her at her word. That’s the point. When you have looked New Mexicans in the eye and told them this industry doesn’t have their interests at heart, and the flagship company of that very industry then hands you the maximum check and skips your opponent entirely, the check is a problem precisely because you meant what you said.

This is what controlled opposition looks like. Controlled opposition says the thing the people want to hear, but does the bidding of the billionaires and big corporations anyway. It’s how voters continue to believe their vote matters, that their party is actually different from the other one. Her Republican opponent openly supports data centers; that’s what his party stands for. But Haaland’s party is supposed to stand for something else. It makes it worse, then, that she says the right words to manipulate voters, while quietly taking money from billionaires and corporations to do the same thing the Republicans would do out in the open.

This is what “two parties” looks like in an oligarchy.

I offer this post freely, but your support is necessary and appreciated. Please like, comment and share — and don’t forget to subscribe! Paid, if you can. You may also leave a one-time or recurring tip in any amount. Just four $25 tips per day keep me writing full-time. Thanks!