Native women win governor, Senate and tribal leadership firsts in midterms

A record 363 Indigenous candidates ran this cycle, and at least 180 won

Tuesday’s midterm elections delivered a broad set of historic representation. The same election cycle brought the country’s first Muslim senator and the first Black female governor, while Native women won offices at state, federal and tribal levels.

Haaland, Flanagan, Curley and Abrams won historic offices

Deb Haaland, a citizen of Laguna Pueblo and Joe Biden’s former interior secretary, won New Mexico’s governorship and will become the country’s first Native American woman governor. Peggy Flanagan, a member of the White Earth band of Ojibwe and Minnesota’s current lieutenant governor, won election to the US Senate and will become the first Native woman to serve in the chamber when she takes her seat in January.

Flanagan told supporters at her victory party in St Paul, Minnesota: “I could not run for the US Senate without Native women. I could not exist in the way that I do without Native women.”

For Haaland, the historic nature of the election sometimes receded from view during the final weeks of her campaign. “Sometimes I forget about the fact that I would be the first Native woman. We’re in the throes of this statewide campaign and it’s so busy and we’re trying to be everywhere all at once,” she said in a recent interview with The Guardian. “But I recognize that for some people who feel like they haven’t ever been represented – I really, I’m grateful that I have this opportunity … I just hope that I can help folks to see that hard work still means something. That anyone can be a leader regardless of where you come from or how much money you do or don’t have.”

Tribal elections held Tuesday produced two more firsts. Crystalyne Curley won the race to lead the Navajo Nation as its first woman leader. The Navajo Nation is the largest tribal nation by geography, spanning approximately 27,000 square miles across parts of New Mexico, Arizona and Utah. Curley is the speaker of the Navajo Nation council, a position she became the first woman to hold in 2022.

“As women, we have to work twice or triple as hard, especially within Navajo politics,” Curley told the Associated Press, adding that she faced sexist rhetoric during her campaign. “This is a win for all Navajo women.”

Tina Abrams won election as president of the Seneca Nation of Indians in western New York. She will become the first woman leader in the modern history of New York state’s largest tribe.

“I am humbled,” Abrams, the Seneca Nation’s president-elect, said in a statement after her victory. “Tonight, at long last, a woman will now lead our Nation as president. This is a moment inspired by generations of strong Seneca women who came before me, and one that I hope inspires generations of Seneca women who come after me.”

National candidate totals and Peltola’s unresolved Alaska race

Voters elected at least 75 Native women or non-binary and Two Spirit candidates nationwide in the November midterms, according to Advance Native Political Leadership and the news site ICT. “This is a seismic shift that is happening in our communities,” Jordan James Harvill, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and a strategist with Advance Native Political Leadership, told the Associated Press.

The Senate has seen four Native men represent their states in its 237-year history. Flanagan will become the first Native woman to join the chamber in January, and Mary Peltola, who is Yup’ik, could join her as another first Native woman pending the results of her still undecided race in Alaska.

This election cycle, a record-setting 363 Indigenous candidates ran for office in local, state and federal elections across the country, and at least 180 won their races. Among the winners was Claire Valdez, a citizen of Ysleta del Sur Pueblo and a Democrat from New York, who will join Sharice Davids in the US House of Representatives.

Native political milestones reached back to 1985

The Guardian said the gains followed a long road to political power and that Native Americans have only been allowed to vote across the entire United States since the 1960s. In 1985, Wilma Mankiller became the first woman elected to serve as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation.

In 2018, Haaland and Sharice Davids, a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation, became the first Native women elected to Congress. They won House seats in the same freshman class as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. Davids was easily re-elected in Kansas last week to a fifth term in Congress.

“The first thing that made [running for office] feel really possible was seeing Deb Haaland, was seeing Sharice Davids on a national level,” New Mexico state senator Angel Charley, who is Laguna/Zuni/Diné, told The Guardian about her decision to enter state politics in 2024.

In 2020, Arizona voted for Biden after an outpouring of voters from the Navajo and Hopi reservations. Biden named Haaland to lead the Interior Department, making her the first Indigenous cabinet secretary. The same year, Yvette Herrell, who is Cherokee, became the first Republican Native woman elected to Congress. She served from 2021 to 2023.

New Mexico implemented an updated Native American Voting Rights Act

In 2023, New Mexico became the first and only state in the country to implement an updated Native American Voting Rights Act. The updated act gave tribes greater input on polling locations and redistricting.