In Why the Native American Vote Could Win the Senate for Democrats in the October 22 Nation, the author explains that four Senate candidates are campaigning in states with enough Native Americans to have an impact: Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota, Jon Tester in Montana, Richard Carmona in Arizona and Martin Heinrich in New Mexico -- states where the tribal population ranges from 5.2 percent in Arizona to 10.1 percent in New Mexico. “In all of those four states, we have great tribal operations" says Jacqueline Johnson, executive director of the nonpartisan National Congress of American Indians, the largest tribal political organization. "Where elections are tighter, the voice of Indian Country has a better chance of participating in the debate.” This year, the registration and voter outreach effort of the NCAI included a Native Vote Action Week that featured 110 tribes, more than 135 events and more than 35,000 participants.
The importance of the Native American vote has been shown before. In 2000, when Maria Cantwell of Washington defeated incumbent Republican Slade Gorton by 2,229 votes out of 2.5 million, she had strong support from Native Americans because of Gorton's efforts against tribal fishing rights. In 2002 Janet Napolitano was losing the election for Arizona governor "until the Navajo vote came in." In Montana in 2006, "the Native vote was the swing vote that put [Senator] Jon Tester in his seat,” says state senator Sharon Stewart-Peregoy, a Crow. In 2010 in Alaska, where Native Americans are 14.9 percent of the population, their votes helped win GOP Senator Lisa Murkowski’s re-election.