Deb Haaland, 65, of Laguna Pueblo, served as the 54th United States secretary of the Interior from 2021 to 2025 after being appointed by President Joe Biden in 2020 and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in March 2021. She became the first Native American to serve as a cabinet secretary and the second to serve in the cabinet. She also served as the U.S. representative for New Mexico’s First Congressional District from 2019 to 2021.
She attended law school at The University of New Mexico in 2006 and was working on completing her master’s degree in American Indian Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, while serving as the interior secretary.
El Rito Media sat down with Deb Haaland to discuss her vision for New Mexico, should she be elected governor.
What are your plans for K-12 education?
“I’m glad the governor and legislature got early childhood learning across the finish line. I want children to read sooner because it’s a foundation of learning, so we want to launch reading coaches into classrooms and help teachers identify the students who need that one-on-one help. If kids can learn to read sooner, they can learn how to do math sooner, they can learn to read, they’ll have the confidence to move forward, so ultimate goal graduating more kids from our public schools and helping them to have more opportunities when they graduate from high school. We also want to bring trades back to the schools in a big way, have career path recognition in middle school and hands-on training for high school, for kids who want to be an electrician, go into carpentry and I want to implement outdoor learning.”
What are your spending priorities for New Mexico?
“I can’t speak to cutting or eliminating, right. You hope that you have enough money to make sure all the important things are happening, but I know that we have a nice education budget already, so maybe it’s just moving budget items around. But I really want the reading coaches in classrooms, I really want the outdoor learning piece to public education and working with the unions to have trades in the schools. And then of course, healthcare is a big issue. There’s a few folks who want to explore a public option for New Mexico, the Medicaid cuts the Trump administration has implementing across New Mexico is really putting a lot of fear and worry into the people across the state and couple that with all the SNAP benefit cuts and making people re-certify every six months for these programs they need and deserve will be very challenging and so we want to make sure people have the healthcare that they need.”
What is your tax policy for individuals and companies and are you in favor of reducing, changing or eliminating GRT?
“Everybody hates GRT, so I feel we need to have conversations about that. I know some municipalities rely on that tax that comes in, so we’ll have to have a lot of conversations, namely about GRT and medical services. Some people feel if we’re trying to recruit and retain doctors and medical professionals here in New Mexico, that we need to change the GRT on medical services. I’d also like to explore tax rebates or tax credits for doctors who work on their own, have their own family practices and things of that nature. Because those are the types of doctors that we want to be in rural communities, so we want to enhance the child tax credit and the working families tax credit, but certainly nobody likes GRT so I’m sure there’s some way we can have those conversations and come to some sort of understanding how to change that.”
What are your plans for reducing homelessness and drug abuse?
“More rehab centers, more behavioral health dollars sent to substance abuse, helping people to become sober. We visited a rehab center just this week, very successful. They need to expand and there’s already people doing that work. There’s already quality companies doing that work, so how can we expand locations, helping people to find opportunities. We need rehab centers in tribal communities as well. They’ve come to us and stated that to us many times. We need more behavioral health professionals in our public schools, too. We went to Las Cruces and visited Community of Hope, it’s so wonderful. We need 20 Communities of Hope around New Mexico. It’s wrap-around services and I think we have people who know how to get services for folks and I feel like thats a good way to go. And veterans integration center was a really good one. They bring veterans in who are unhoused and they give them what they need immediately and then they follow them and help them access the benefits they deserve, open bank accounts, get a job if that’s the case and then they follow them after they move out of the veterans integration center. They’re not alone for months and months, it’s a six-month program. So I feel like those are all programs that work.”
What can New Mexico do to be more attractive and competitive for new businesses?
“I mentioned the site readiness fund that would go for medical facilities, but also for small businesses. We need a one-stop shop for small businesses can go and do everything at one place instead of going to one department for this and another department for that. It sometimes gets confusing and it’s difficult. Training, there’s arts and crafts people all over our state’s pueblos and in our rural communities. How can we help them get online with the things they sell. We need to make sure that people have access to the Internet or they have opportunities to learn how to build a website and so forth. The opportunity scholarships are very much in favor of enhancing, if people want to change careers midway, so whatever we can do to help folks get the training they need and certifications they need.”
Do you approve of data centers?
“We need to be concerned about water, we’re in a high desert in the middle of a climate crisis. I’m not quite sure how the data centers are dealing with the water issue. You hear they’re only going to use a small amount, they’re going to have closed loop systems, but then you hear the closed loop systems need to be flushed every now and then and that water is not usable after that. I feel the public is not informed about, they’re not transparent on how they’re going to use our natural resources. In New Mexico, we have a goal of zero emissions by 2050. As a state, if we have zero emissions by 2050 we all have to assent to that goal. Data centers haven’t been transparent. We need to have guardrails, any industry that comes to New Mexico, they have to be sustainable, we don’t have water to burn here.”
How can environmental concerns be addressed?
“The Trump administration has no regard for our environment here, so they’re moving those things forward (uranium mining in the Carson National Forest). I think people need to keep speaking out. New Mexico has scars all over the state. I’m from Laguna Pueblo, the largest open pit uranium mine in the state for 30 years. Uranium blew around for 25 years before they came and cleaned it up. We have so much legacy pollution here that it’s still making people sick. I’m not in favor, we need to clean up the mess that we started and the federal government is responsible for so much of that and yet they are talking about reopening a wound that so many people are still suffering from and still have trauma over. I feel that here in New Mexico, people’s health comes first. A place like the Carson National Forest, you feel alive in a place like that and they want to have a uranium mine there. I’m against that. For any of these things, San Ildefonso pueblo is right there (near Los Alamos National Laboratory). They need to consult with other tribes in the area (regarding the plans for plutonium production at LANL). This is the ancestral homeland of the pueblo people. If I’m the next governor, I’m going to press them to make sure they are actively doing tribal consultation because that isn’t happening with the Trump administration. The tribes have a real say in what happens on these lands.”
“Our top four policy pillars are: education, healthcare, public safety and affordability, when I first launched my campaign, those were the four things people were talking about. Whatever we do, we have to ensure that New Mexicans can sustain themselves, that they have healthy food to eat, that we are meeting the moment because right now Donald Trump is making New Mexican sicker, hungrier and poorer. I feel that any government needs to care about it’s citizens and that’s one of the main reasons I’m running for governor.”