The road to Isleta Pueblo, a Native American tribal community just 20 minutes south of downtown Albuquerque, New Mexico, is peppered with campaign signs. Among the many names of candidates running in next week’s midterm elections and tribal elections later in November, there’s one that is poised to make history.
Deb Haaland is set to become the first Native American female governor in the US when voters cast their ballots on 3 November. Recent polling shows her with a comfortable lead over her opponent, Republican Gregg Hull, a businessman and the longtime mayor of the city of Rio Rancho. Her bid for office also signals the growing power of the Democratic party in the state, where Democrats control the legislature, hold all top offices and have enacted progressive policies, such as universal childcare, that have been heralded across the country.
Haaland, who is a member of Laguna Pueblo, has been a rising star in national politics since 2018, when she was elected to Congress alongside a wave of progressive freshmen lawmakers, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. In the House of Representatives, Haaland sponsored legislation such as the Not Invisible Act, which focused on the epidemic of missing and murdered Native Americans. After Joe Biden was elected president in 2020, he named Haaland to lead the interior department, making her the first Native American to lead a cabinet agency. In that role, Haaland oversaw the formation of a missing and murdered unit within the Bureau of Indian Affairs and advocated for protecting culturally significant lands, including Chaco Canyon and Bears Ears…