Stephanie Garcia Richard

Stephanie Garcia Richard is New Mexico's Commissioner of Public Lands, elected in 2018 and now serving her second term. In July she rejected Energy Transfer's "Green Chili" gas lateral for the second time, refusing to let the line cross state trust land to feed Project Jupiter's power plant.

She is the first woman, first Latina, and first educator to hold the office, having previously served six years in the New Mexico House of Representatives. As commissioner she oversees roughly 9 million surface acres and 13 million mineral acres of state trust land, which she is constitutionally required to manage for the financial benefit of public schools and other beneficiaries, weighing lease income against long-term risk to the land.

In the pipeline decision she set the trust's fiduciary duty, an estimated $249,000 in foregone lease revenue, against 10.1 million tons a year of greenhouse-gas emissions from the microgrid the lateral would have fed, more than the city of Albuquerque produces. She is running for lieutenant governor in 2026, which puts her Jupiter ruling under wider political scrutiny.