Tuesday’s general election will put 225 Indigenous candidates on the ballot in 30 states, the most ever in a single election cycle. That total includes Alicia “Liish” Kozlowski, who is seeking a third term representing Minnesota House District 8B, and it comes as Indigenous women are running at parity with Indigenous men.
The number matters because this is not a symbolic showing. The candidates represent nearly 100 different Indigenous nations, and the ballot lineups stretch across federal, state and local races. Compared with the 364 candidates who ran for 368 seats in the primaries, the general-election field is smaller but broader in reach, and it shows how far Indigenous political organizing has spread since Mark Trahant’s 2016 database.
That database, created by ICT and Advance Native Political Leadership and later inherited and expanded by ICT in 2018, now shows a nearly 400 percent increase in Indigenous candidates running for federal, state and local offices. Half of the general-election candidates are running as Democrats, 39 percent are on ballots as nonpartisan or Independent, 23 are Republicans and one is a Green Party candidate. The spread underscores that this year’s record is not coming from one party or one region.
The clearest break from the usual pattern is among Native women. There are 121 Indigenous women and 104 Indigenous men running this fall, and Jordan James Harvill says Native women historically ran at a slightly lower rate but began running at higher rates in the early 2020s. He says they also win at a higher clip, with an average win rate of about 62 percent, even if most Native women are running in competitive districts that do not cross sovereign lands.
Kozlowski fits that newer political map. Elected in 2022 as Minnesota’s first non-binary legislator, they are now looking to hold their seat in Minnesota House District 8B for a third term. Six Indigenous candidates in the general election identify as Two Spirit or non-binary, a reminder that the historic nature of this ballot is not only about how many Native candidates are running, but also about who they are and how openly they are claiming space in public life.
Deb Haaland is also in the frame as the likely first Native American woman elected governor anywhere in the country. Mark Trahant has said governors and senators sit at the doorway to national power because they get national exposure and national money, and that makes Tuesday’s vote more than a local count of candidates. It is a test of whether record representation on the ballot turns into record representation in office.
