The Navajo Nation is voting Tuesday for a new president in a general election that, for the first time in recent memory, has no candidate openly backing the coal industry. That shift puts the spotlight on a race that now runs through the future of the Navajo Mine, the power plant it feeds and the jobs tied to both.
The Nation counts close to half a million enrolled citizens worldwide, and voters are deciding between Justin Jones and Crystalyne Curley after Buu Nygren and 13 other candidates failed to advance from the July primary. Nygren, an Arizona delegate to the 2024 Democratic National Convention, had made coal central to his case, saying he would keep the Navajo Mine open and support the coal-fired power plant owned by Arizona Public Service that could remain operating until 2038.
That argument did not survive the primary. Nygren had aligned himself closely with Donald Trump’s coal agenda and even took a selfie with Trump at the White House last year when Trump signed an executive order aimed at saving the coal industry. But voters rejected Nygren and his slogan, “Nygren digs coal,” leaving the general election without a candidate openly promising to keep coal at the center of the Navajo Nation’s economy.
Coal still matters on the 27,000-square-mile reservation in the Southwest. It has long been an economic pillar, and it remains part of daily life in homes across Arizona, New Mexico and Utah that still lack electricity. The Navajo Mine, the last remaining coal mine on the tribal reservation, sits in the Four Corners region of New Mexico and continues to anchor that debate.
Jones and Curley have both moved the race away from coal. At an October debate at Arizona State University in Phoenix, Jones said he is opposed to coal mining and to any form of mining that involves blasting and extracting resources. Curley said coal is dying and is not coming back, and that an administration is needed to move forward with a new plan.
There is also a political cost to the coal message itself. Andrew Curley, an assistant professor at the University of Arizona and author of Carbon Sovereignty: Coal, Development, and Energy Transition in the Navajo Nation, said voters were upset about Nygren’s White House photo-op. He said it reflected a politics many people on the reservation reject and one that does not fit the real struggles around the coal economy.
The next question is not whether coal will dominate the general election — voters already answered that in July. It is whether the next president can navigate an economy built on coal while preparing for a future in which no candidate was willing to defend it out loud.
