Tuesday’s general election includes 225 Indigenous candidates in 30 states, the highest number ever recorded by the database used by ICT and Advance Native Political Leadership. Deb Haaland is among the most closely watched names, with her race placing her in position to become the first Native American woman elected as governor.
ICT and Advance Native Political Leadership
The database counts candidates across federal, state and local offices, and it includes nearly 100 different Indigenous nations that are state or federally recognized in the United States, along with Indigenous communities from across borders. The field is also broad in party terms: half of the candidates are Democrats on general election ballots, 39 percent are nonpartisan or Independent candidates, 23 are Republicans and one is running as a Green Party candidate.
Jordan James Harvill of Advance Native Political Leadership said the broader pattern changed in the early 2020s. “Native women historically had ran for office at a slightly lower rate than Native men, but that trend reversed in the early 2020s, and we’ve seen, by and large, that Native women are starting to run at higher rates,” Harvill said.
Alicia “Liish” Kozlowski
The scale of the field is also visible in Minnesota, where Alicia “Liish” Kozlowski, elected in 2022 as Minnesota’s first non-binary legislator, is seeking a third term in Minnesota House District 8B. Their race is part of a general election that includes 121 Indigenous women and 104 Indigenous men, a near-even split that leaves women slightly ahead in raw numbers.
Harvill said the numbers alone do not tell the full story. “Despite them running at higher rates or not, they win at dramatically higher rates, and we’ve seen across the years, on average, about a 62 percent win rate for Native women who run,” Harvill said. That pattern is paired with another geographic reality: most Native women are running in districts that do not cross sovereign lands.
Deb Haaland
Haaland’s race carries the clearest national consequence in the field. If she wins, she would become the first Native American woman elected as governor anywhere in the country, a result that would give the Tuesday ballot a direct first-time breakthrough at the statewide level.
Mark Trahant, a longtime political correspondent and former editor of ICT, said statewide offices bring national exposure. “Every senator thinks they’re on the next step to the White House. That just comes with the job when you’re one of a 100. It’s just automatic,” Trahant said. He added, “Governors are where most presidents come from… Those (two) offices get national exposure. They get national money. I wouldn’t put it at all out.”
The general election field also marks a sharp expansion from earlier cycles. The database shows 364 candidates running for 368 seats in the primaries, with four candidates running for multiple seats, and the number of Indigenous candidates running for federal, state and local offices is nearly 400 percent higher than in Trahant’s 2016 database. For readers following these races now, the immediate answer comes on the ballot: whether the larger field converts into wins for candidates like Haaland, Kozlowski and the rest of the 225-person slate.
