Idaho Archives » Native Voice One

Candidates Seeking Early Votes in Primary Contests Across the Country

April 30, 2018 By Bob Petersen

Tatewin Means is running for the Attorney General of South Dakota. (Campaign photo)

It’s already time to cast ballots in the 2018 election season — a cycle with more Native Americans running for Congress or to lead state governments than ever before. The first election tests are in Idaho, South Dakota and New Mexico.

This is Trahant Reports.

Paulette Jordan, Couer d’Alene, is looking for those early votes now in her bid to be the first Native American woman to lead a state. She is currently touring all of Idaho’s 44 counties before the May 15 Democratic Primary for governor.

Primary elections are an odd fixture in American politics. Any small dedicated group of voters, such as Native Americans, are better positioned to win a primary election because the turnout is so low. In Idaho’s last primary election only 22 percent of voters turned out for the primary — and most of them were Republican voters.

South Dakota is another state where absentee, or early voting, has begun. The primary is June 5. But South Dakota Democrats will pick their statewide candidate at the party convention on June 15 and 16. This means delegates, not voters, will pick the statewide candidates.

Tatewin Means, a former Attorney General for the Oglala Sioux Tribe, is running for Attorney General against former U.S. Attorney Randy Seiler.

The challenge is similar to the Jordan race in Idaho because South Dakota Democrats are faced with a choice of a picking an establishment candidate or a younger Native American woman who has the potential to bring new voters into the process.

“I am an atypical candidate,” Means told KOTA News. “I am an indigenous woman. I am a single mother and this is my first political campaign. And so that brings a fresh perspective to a criminal justice and law enforcement system that doesn’t typically have that point of view at the table.”

There are several races with Native candidates for the state legislature in contested primaries.

In Utah, a congressional candidate won his party’s nomination for the third district over the weekend without a primary. James Singer, Navajo, earned 77 percent of the delegate vote and will face the winner of the Republican primary in November. Singer is running in the district that includes Bear’s Ears monument as well as Ute Mountain and the Navajo Nation.

New Mexico’s voters can cast ballots beginning May 8.

Democrat Deb Haaland, Laguna Pueblo, is one of six candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives in Albuquerque. This promises to be a close race, but Haaland easily won support from the state Democratic Party’s delegates at a pre-primary convention.

Further south, in the second congressional district on the Republican ticket, Gavin Clarkson, Choctaw, is in a four-way contest. He’s campaigned on support for President Donald J. Trump and “draining the swamp in Washington.”

The people are voting — and the 2018 election is underway. I am Mark Trahant.

Mark’s Musings on the Idaho Governor’s race

April 2, 2018 By Bob Petersen

A couple of weeks ago I was driving across the border into Idaho from Montana. I stopped the car and took a picture of the “Welcome to Idaho” sign. I thought: It would be cool if that sign read, just under the Idaho greeting, “Paulette Jordan, Governor.”

Jordan, a Coeur d’Alene citizen, is running as a Democrat in what is perhaps the reddest, most Republican state in the country. So it’s an impossible task, right?

Let’s do the math. This is Trahant Reports.

Paulette Jordan is one of seven Native American candidates running for statewide office — and one two Native women running to a lead a state (something never been done before). She will be the first of those candidates to face voters — and she will need to win a contested Democratic primary on May 15.

One of the most important reasons for Native American candidates is the aspirational aspect. It’s a way for young people to see a future (one that is far more important than just politics.)

Jordan recently told a group of Native voters on the Shoshone-Bannock Reservation that public policy issues don’t affect just tribes. “Every single issue that tribes push forward are issues that are good for everyone.”

Jordan is running against A.J. Balukoff in a primary election and she has to earn a few thousand votes. That’s plausible, especially in a season where nontraditional candidates are getting a second and third look.

Votes from Idaho’s five reservations could help, too. The numbers are small, but if they are one-sided — say 100, 200, 300 votes to a handful, well, it could give her an edge. Especially in a primary.

Jordan should have an edge with younger Democratic voters and with Hispanics. These two constituent groups that are growing in numbers and importance. Idaho is a young state: There are more people under 18 than any other demographic group. And younger voters — 18 to 25 — are a relatively small cohort. But in the last elections this group increased its turnout rates, so there is a potential upside. Hispanics now account for 12 percent of Idaho’s population and, according to Pew Research, some 80,000 eligible voters (or far more than what would be needed in a primary election.)

So the math is there. It’s possible.

What about Jordan’s message? Is she reaching primary voters? That’s a much tougher call. She has to campaign in a state with two time zones and a distinct geographic north, south divide.

And after the primary? The toughest hill to climb come after the primary. Jordan would need to make her case to Idaho’s deeply conservative Republican voters. But if there is ever a year to do just that, this is this one.

I am Mark Trahant.

Jordan First Native American Woman to Hit Campaign Trail for Governor

December 18, 2017 By Bob Petersen

Paulette Jordan is campaigning to be the Governor of Idaho.

This is Trahant Reports.

There have been very few Native Americans who have ever run for office at that level (I can think of three: Alaska’s Byron Mallott, Idaho’s Larry EchoHawk, and Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota).

Now add Jordan to that list. And she’s the first Native woman who has the audacity to ask citizens to run their state. Yay!

She also already has winning over conservative Idaho voters. Two years ago when Democrats were losing races across the country, she captured her second term as a state representative, winning by a margin of 290 votes. That might not sound like a lot, but she won during a Republican wave.

Jordan is a citizen of the Coeur d’Alene Tribe.

She grew up in a farming family, Jordan says her grandparents showed her that cultivating the land was a continuation of our ancestral traditions of caring for homelands. The Coeur d’Alene peoples have cared for Idaho homelands since time immemorial and Idahoans today practice the same combination of self-sufficiency and cooperation that her grandparents once did. She told her constituents: This is what connects us to each other.

At her announcement, Jordan said, “when asked, ‘what are you going to do next to improve this world?’” She answered: “I am going to run for governor.”

Idaho once regularly elected Democrats to state office, including former Interior Secretary Cecil Andrus (who won office a record four times). These days it’s a super-majority Republican state. But things change. Idaho is also a state where the legendary National Congress of American Indians President Joe Garry served in the state senate and was a candidate for the U.S. Senate. It’s where Jeannie Givens served in the legislature and she ran for the U.S. House of Representatives (in fact, likely the first Native woman to do so). Both Garry and Givens are Coeur d’Alene tribal members. It’s also a state that that elected Larry EchoHawk, a Pawnee, first to the legislature, and later as Idaho’s state’s Attorney General. EchoHawk did lose a bid for governor. And, so yes, it’s an uphill climb for Jordan. But it’s not impossible.

One telling story about Jordan is that she lost her first race for the legislature in 2012 by less than a hundred-fifty votes. She did not give up. She went right back to work — and won two years later.

Jordan said there is even an advantage to being a member of the minority party. She said being in the majority can be insular and keep their circle small. She said: “In my family, our circle can always get bigger, and that’s what I see for Idaho. A bigger circle is what achieving justice for all looks like.”

I am Mark Trahant