Micaela Cadena

Provide a short bio of yourself and tell us how you got into public service?

Micaela Lara Cadena is an activist, parent, and policymaker grateful to call the Mesilla Valley home. Over decades, Micaela has organized across issues of reproductive justice and criminal legal reform, learning from and following the lead of resilient New Mexicans who understand their own lives best.

In the state legislature, Micaela serves as the Vice Chair of the House Tax Committee where she has effected state tax policies that better care for the realities of New Mexico families. Micaela is also a member of the House Water and Agriculture committee because water is life and we all deserve a say in our shared water futures.

While she may appear as “progressive” on paper, this is because our southern New Mexico values lead her there–not because a political party told her to be. There is a big difference, and the people of this district have always been able to tell.

Residents across Doña Ana County continue to raise concerns about crime and juvenile violence. What specific state-level changes — whether in juvenile justice laws, behavioral health funding, schools or law enforcement support — do you believe are most urgently needed?

The conversations about crime in our communities too often skip straight to enforcement and stop there. What I have seen, both as a parent and as someone who has spent years with families in southern New Mexico, is that young people who are struggling need intervention well before they end up in the juvenile justice system.

This means behavioral health funding and resources that actually reach communities like ours, schools that have counselors and wraparound support instead of only resource officers, and an honest reckoning with the fact that poverty and trauma are driving a lot of what we are calling a crime problem.

But I continue to wonder: why aren’t we asking young people about their own realities? Every legislative hearing, every task force, every community meeting about juvenile violence is filled with adults deciding what young people need without including young people at the table. That is not just a missed opportunity, but it is the same problematic pattern that has failed our families for generations.

Young people in our communities are not just a problem to be solved; they are the experts of their own lives. I am not interested in tough-on-crime legislation that makes people feel like something is being done while the actual conditions that produce violence go unaddressed. Young people deserve places where they find belonging. I will be listening when they tell us what they need.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Project Jupiter has generated excitement about economic growth but also questions about water use, infrastructure and public transparency. What role should the state legislature play in overseeing or supporting large-scale economic development projects like this?

What is happening with Project Jupiter is not economic development. It was a dirty deal made in the dark, and over the objections of the people who will live with the consequences. This is not unique to New Mexico — it is happening across the country. Data centers and the infrastructure needed to power them are moving fast, faster than most state legislatures.

New Mexico has been complicit in this pattern. Too many politicians are proud to be chasing every shiny economic promise dangled in front of us without asking hard questions about who bears the cost and who actually benefits from these projects.

But this moment is different, the scale is different, the water implications are different. The speed at which these projects are being approved, while communities are still trying to understand what is coming, should alarm every elected official in this state. The legislature has both the authority and the obligation to get ahead of this.

Let’s be honest about what has made that so hard. It’s not a lack of information or tools. New Mexico keeps finding ourselves on the wrong side of these decisions because too many of our own have failed us. When legislators are married to the lobbying class, when those same networks are handpicking candidates in local elections to protect their interests, when the people making decisions about our water and our land have a financial stake in the outcome — that is not governance, that is corruption.

Project Jupiter fielded a candidate to challenge me, funded a candidate to challenge me, and is running dirty and dishonest political ads in a desperate attempt to silence me.

If I have the honor of winning again, alongside my colleagues Rep. Rubio and Rep. Chavez, I will be sponsoring a moratorium on data centers across New Mexico to give our state time to consider appropriate protections and parameters should this industry be allowed to operate within our state.

Additionally, we will be introducing legislation to reign in the dangerous “microgrids” advanced by Rep. Nathan Small and Senator Michael Padilla– no one producing power in New Mexico should be exempt from our landmark Energy Transition Act.

New Mexico continues to rank near the bottom nationally in education outcomes despite increased spending in recent years. What do you believe is missing from the current approach, and what changes would you prioritize if elected?

New Mexico has been throwing money at education for years while our kids stay at the bottom of every national ranking. An important and defining example of how we must do better is the Yazzie-Martinez ruling from 2018, where the court said plainly that the state was failing Native students, low-income students, English learners, kids with disabilities. Constitutionally failing kids.

And what did the New Mexico governor do? They sat on it. Draft plans for implementation went to her office and disappeared. Eight years later the plaintiffs are now asking for authority to lay out an implementation plan themselves because the state still hasn’t produced one worth a damn.

The people making decisions about Native education are not Native, and the people deciding what low-income families in Southern New Mexico need are not from here nor have those lived experiences. And until that changes, until the people living with these failures are the ones with real power over fixing them, we are going to keep having this debate over and over again.

I have and will continue to commit to ensuring that our schools reflect the culture, language, and history of the kids sitting in them. That means paying and supporting teachers well enough that we stop losing them to other states. That means stopping the pattern of treating education as a problem to be solved from Santa Fe by people who have never sat in a classroom in Doña Ana County or on tribal lands.

Affordable housing has become a growing issue in Las Cruces and surrounding communities. What can the state realistically do to increase housing availability while also addressing concerns about rising property values and cost of living?

The state can move the needle on housing, but only if we’re honest about what’s actually driving the problem — we need zoning reform, investments in infrastructure, and incentives for workforce housing development. New Mexico needs more housing, period.

What I’ve learned since being in the legislature is that building out housing stock at any price point generates movement in the housing market and increased affordability overall.

The state should also be using our authorities to require community benefit agreements on any large-scale development that receives public subsidy or state approval. If a project is going to drive up land values and the cost of living for working families, besides drawing down our already scarce resources, it should be required to contribute to affordable housing stock in the same community.

We should also be looking at anti-displacement protections for renters in communities experiencing rapid development pressure, a basic non-political question of whether working families get to stay in the places they built. The tools exist, but we’ve been missing the political will to use these tools on behalf of the people who actually need them rather than the developers and landlords who benefit from the status quo, and who hang around the Roundhouse.​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Many voters feel increasingly divided politically, even within their own communities and parties. How would you describe your governing style, and how would you work with people who strongly disagree with you on major issues?

When my colleagues and I disagree, they know where I stand because I tell them, and they know I’m not going to change my position because leadership is uncomfortable or because pressure is coming from the NM Governor or any particular organization.

I regularly work with people I disagree with because that’s part of this role. What I won’t do is pretend a bad idea is good because it’s politically convenient. Southern New Mexico deserves a representative who says the same thing in Santa Fe that she says here at home.

Pushing back gently on the question itself: is the assumption behind “how do you work with people who strongly disagree with you” that the goal is always consensus? Sometimes it is, yes, but sometimes the disagreement is the point. Sometimes the most important thing a legislator can do is refuse to smooth over a conflict that needs to stay visible. My constituents don’t send me to Santa Fe to get along. They send me to fight for them, and those are not always the same thing.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​