Tag: Laguna Pueblo

The results of the midterm elections will install a new wave of diverse, progressive, first-time candidates in congress. Ahead of the election, white men represented 69 per cent of all governors and members of congress, but just a third of the United States’ population. At 29, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has become the youngest women ever elected to congress. She will represent New York’s 14th congressional district. A year before successfully taking on 10-term Democrat incumbent Joe Crowley in the 2018 primaries, Ms Ocasio-Cortez was working in bar to help support her family. She had already become the first black woman to be elected to Boston City Council in 2009. Sharice Davids Sharice Davids of Kansas won her seat to become the first Native American and gay woman elected to the House. Ms Davids is an attorney and member of the Ho-Chunk nation. Her midterms election victory makes her the joint-first Muslim women elected to congress, along with Ilhan Omar (see below). His gubernatorial campaign focused on free early-childhood education, and making Colorado into becoming a “100 per cent renewable energy state”.

Deb Haaland, the former New Mexico state Democratic party chair who is seeking to make history as the first Native American woman elected to Congress, had just one question before running: could she win? “So I decided to run.” Haaland is a citizen of the Pueblo of Laguna tribe and one of a record number of Native American women running for office this year. It remains possible Haaland won’t be the only Native American female elected to Congress this year. Sharice Davids, a member of the Ho-Chunk nation, is running in a competitive Democratic primary in a swing district in Kansas, and Amanda Douglas, a member of the Cherokee nation, advanced to a runoff election in the Democratic primary for a deeply conservative Oklahoma congressional district. Unlike many of the female candidates running for office in the wake of Trump’s election, this is far from Haaland’s first foray into politics. He recalled that New Mexicans elected the Republican Susana Martinez after she reminded voters that she would be “the nation’s first Hispanic female governor”. “People like to make history. But Haaland’s primary success was not a marginal one, Monahan added. In a Democratic district, she is positioned favorably ahead of the general election. “But every now and then I’ll get a sense from someone else and it makes me emotional because I realize that, for some people, they never thought they would see someone like them in Congress.”