Daisy Maldonado is a community organizer, trained economist, and candidate for Doña Ana County Commission District 1. She came to Las Cruces from El Paso in 2003 to attend New Mexico State University, made this community her home, and raised her son here in the Las Cruces public schools. She got into public service the way most people from working-class families do — not by planning it, but by witnessing injustice and deciding she could not look away. She watched her mother, a caseworker, spend her entire life serving people on the margins of society, and when her mother died at fifty from lupus and inadequate healthcare, Daisy made a promise to stand with those who have the least power and access to decision-making bodies but are directly impacted by government. Over the past decade, she served as the director of a nonprofit, where she supported leaders, built coalitions, and engaged in water advocacy and vaccine and early childhood funding advocacy across colonia communities, environmental organizations, and civic groups — work that ultimately led her here.