And no one is willing to take credit for it

Joshua Bowling, Source New Mexico

This article was originally published by Source New Mexico.

The purple and yellow mailers started appearing in southern New Mexicans’ mailboxes in January and told of “a new day for New Mexico.” If the massive Project Jupiter data center from tech giants OpenAI and Oracle gets off the ground, the flyers said residents would reap the benefits of $360 million in community investments, $50 million for improving local water systems and “thousands of high-paying careers, prioritizing Doña Ana residents.”

The mailers contained a QR code with a call to action: “Voice Your Support.” Scanning it took users to a website that asked them to fill in their names and addresses so they could urge New Mexico Environment Department officials to issue the air quality permits that Project Jupiter’s developers need to build an on-site natural gas generating station that will power the data center complex. Initial applications for the project, for which elected county officials already approved $165 billion in bonds, sought permission to emit as many greenhouse gases as New Mexico’s two largest cities combined.

Shortly thereafter, digital ads from the same group, Elevate New Mexico, began to appear on Facebook and LinkedIn. They appeared next to front-page headlines on websites for local news sources, including the Albuquerque Journal, the Santa Fe Reporter and the Las Cruces Sun-News. Elevate New Mexico’s website encouraged residents to make their voices heard while the state environment department’s period for public comment was still open — it closed Monday.

What the ads didn’t say, though, was that Elevate New Mexico isn’t registered with the New Mexico Secretary of State. They didn’t mention that the smiling woman on the mailer is a stock model who appears in the same pose and outfit on a dentistry’s website and in a 2025 conference brochure for the Arizona League of Cities and Towns.

Nor did the materials disclose who foots the bill for the sleek ad campaign.

Elevate New Mexico’s website lists only that its copyright is owned by Elevate New Mexico. Public records show the company is headquartered in Virginia at a nondescript office building, where occupants told Source NM they’d never heard of such a company. The return address on physical mailers sent to southern New Mexicans appears to be a Parcel Plus shipping store in Alexandria, Virginia.

“This is one of those things that people get in the mail and throw them away,” said Neeshia Macanowicz, a Las Cruces resident who first received one of the mailers in January. She said she was immediately skeptical of it, and wondered why it did not have a “paid for” message at the bottom, like political mailers do. “Just the shape and size of it. It’s junk.”

In addition to physical mailers, Elevate New Mexico has run a number of digital ads on social media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn that promise potential benefits to the region’s water and electric systems.

“Help bring stable and affordable electricity to New Mexico,” one reads. “We need to protect and conserve our water in Doña Ana County,” another reads. “Let’s stop exporting talent and start building careers,” yet another says.

The LinkedIn ad library, which contains information about advertisements such as who paid to place specific ads on users’ feeds, says the Washington, D.C.-based public affairs and communications firm APCO Worldwide LLC placed some of Elevate New Mexico’s ads on its platform. APCO has a “data center advisory services” division, which advertises “advocacy communications.”

Similarly, the Santa Fe Reporter’s ad department director told Source NM that APCO paid about $2,000 to take out ads, which ran for about two weeks, on the publication’s website.

The ads predominantly feature Hispanic and Latino models, which New Mexico Environmental Law Center senior attorney Maslyn Locke said reeks of environmental racism. The campaign frames the proposed development as a community asset while cash-rich tech giants seek to build in a relatively low-income community of color, Locke, who is representing residents in litigation related to Project Jupiter, said.

“It’s very much a brownwashing campaign,” Locke said. “You have these out-of-state companies coming in, naming their companies things like Red Chile Ventures, Green Chile Ventures, Yucca, Acoma and then sending around this mailer with a woman of color on it…to make this feel like a homegrown, widely supported thing.”

It’s unclear if the campaign will have any effect on state environmental officials’ decision to approve or deny air quality permit applications for Project Jupiter. The opportunity for public comment on the process closed Monday and, as of Tuesday afternoon, the department had received about 7,700 comments, according to NMED spokesperson Drew Goretzka. He noted that many are likely duplicates, but did not say how many were in favor of the project or opposed to it, and did not say whether any stemmed from the Elevate New Mexico ad campaign. In an email to Source NM on Monday, he wrote that officials had not received any comments that matched the form letter on Elevate New Mexico’s website.

Yet whether Elevate New Mexico’s efforts sway the outcome of the environment department’s decision, the digital marketing effort has felt like an “onslaught,” said Daisy Maldonado, the former director of the Empowerment Congress of Doña Ana County. In her time with the community advocacy organization, she said she oversaw “action forms” that encouraged residents to write letters to state environment officials for issues like Project Jupiter’s pending air quality permit applications. Elevate New Mexico, she said, appeared to show up “in response.”

She’s seen similar efforts before, she said.

Before the Doña Ana County Board of County Commissioners in September voted to issue $165 billion in bonds for Project Jupiter, a website called Elevate Doña Ana ran endorsements from the county manager and state Rep. Nathan Small (D-Las Cruces) and asked residents to send a similar form letter to county commissioners. Another website, Upward New Mexico, voiced support for “game-changing investments such as data centers.”

Unlike Elevate New Mexico, though, both groups disclose their ownership on social media and in filings with the New Mexico Secretary of State. State law requires that mailers disclose their sponsors when they’re related to elections.

A spokesperson for the New Mexico State Ethics Commission said she could not confirm or deny whether the commission was looking into Elevate New Mexico. Likewise, a spokesperson for the Secretary of State’s Office told Source NM that officials there “were not aware of the organization and have not received any complaints regarding the organization’s activity in New Mexico.”

The companies behind Project Jupiter — BorderPlex Digital Assets, Stack Infrastructure, OpenAI and Oracle — did not respond to requests for comment. Neither did APCO, the D.C.-based firm.

State Rep. Micaela Lara Cadena (D-Mesilla), an opponent of Project Jupiter, said she’s concerned by the way “outside, unnamed, unidentified actors are leveraging huge amounts of money” to sway public opinion.

“It’s really problematic when they talk about ‘our jobs,’ ‘our future,’” she said. “It’s offensive.”

Joshua Bowling is a senior reporter for Source New Mexico. He's reported in New Mexico, where he broke stories of lavish spending at Western New Mexico University and more, since 2022.