Worth nothing without a congressional seat going with it. That’s 700k people.
The not-so dirty secret is that we had a Pub representative in NM-2 until 2021 when the NM Dems (who control all state government) gerrymandered the very conservative parts of Hobbs and Roswell into NM-1 (Albuquerque) and NM-3 which are Dem seats. Now, here in northern Lea county beside the Texas border, I share my Dem congressional representative with northern New Mexico residents along the southern Colorado border and the Navajo Indians along the northeastern Arizona border.
The oil and gas industry is treated with utter contempt in Sante Fe.
It’s so bad you can tell where my ranch crosses into Texas (one part of which spans NM towards Seminole TX).
How? The pump jacks are all idle on the NM side. It’s not worth the trouble.
There’s literally wells running down the TX/NM line. I’m the lessor on both sides.