Indigenous candidates hope to boost representation in WA state

Iyall is a candidate for the state Senate from the 22nd District, which includes Olympia, Lacey and Tumwater. If elected, he would be one of four Native Americans in the legislature.

Lekanoff is unopposed for reelection to the state House from the 40th District, and Kauffman, a state senator from the 47th District, is not up for reelection until 2026. Stearns, who won this year’s primary with 55% of the vote in his bid for reelection to the state House from the 47th District, is facing former state Republican Party vice chairman Ted Cooke.

Iyall’s top issues are affordable housing; finding funds for new highways, public transit expansion and maintenance of roads and bridges; expanding mental health services; and environmental restoration and salmon recovery.

It’s a tough campaign for Iyall. He’s a Democrat running against a Democrat. In Washington, the top two candidates in the primary, regardless of party affiliation, advance to the general election. The top finisher, state Rep. Jessica Bateman, received 68.3% of the vote; Iyall advanced with 20.5%. Third-place finisher Tela Hogle, also a Democrat, received 8.4%.

Iyall is a retired union bricklayer who later earned a master’s in business administration at Washington State University and became chief executive of Medicine Creek Enterprise Corporation, the economic development arm of the Nisqually Tribe. He also served as chairman of the Native American Economic Development Association.

“If a future where we’re saving the environment, building as much housing as we can to meet demand, [doing] reliable and future-forward transportation planning, and working to make sure everyone who needs behavioral health receives services sounds like a good place to be, then I’m asking for your vote,” he wrote on his campaign website.

Native Americans also serve in elected city, school district and county positions in Washington, among them Ashley Brown, Nooksack, Everson City Council; Lea Anne Burke, Lumbee, Snohomish City Council; James Lovell, Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, SeaTac City Council; Chris Roberts, Choctaw, Shoreline City Council; LaTrisha Suggs, Jamestown S’Klallam, Port Angeles City Council; and Elizabeth Villa, Nez Perce, Wapato City Council.

Steve Oliver, Lummi, is Whatcom County treasurer; Jennifer White, Makah, is treasurer of Clallam County; and Raquel Montoya-Lewis, Isleta Pueblo, is an associate justice of the state Supreme Court.

One elected official is pulling triple duty: Jeremy “J.J.” Wilbur, a member of the Swinomish Tribe’s senate, serves on the La Conner School Board and as an elected fire district commissioner.

Other Native Americans made monumental runs for state office this year.

In the August primary, former Makah Tribe vice chairman Patrick Depoe placed fourth among seven candidates for state commissioner of public lands. He had received the endorsement of The Seattle Times, and, had he advanced out of the primary and prevailed in the general election, he would have been the first Native American elected to statewide office.

Nate Tyler — a member of the Makah Tribal Council as well as the Sheriff’s Advisory Committee in Clallam County — placed fourth among five candidates for the state House of Representatives from the 24th District.

Nine Native legislators since 1889

Only nine Native Americans have been elected to Washington’s legislature since statehood in 1889, seven of them within the past 20 years.

“This country is a democracy — a republic with a representative form of government,” Stearns said. “Ideally, we should be representative of the population. I think, based on our demographics in our state, we’re supposed to have eight or nine, maybe 10, Native Americans in the House and four in the Senate. I think that should be a goal. I fully start with the premise that we need to elect more Native Americans.”

The high point in Native representation came between 2016 and 2021. Maia Bellon, Mescalero Apache, was serving as the governor-appointed director of the Department of Ecology — the first Native American to serve in a cabinet position in Washington. Former Superior Court Judge Debora Juarez, Blackfeet, was elected in 2016 to the Seattle City Council, another first. And that year, Colville Tribes Chairman Joe Pakootas, a Democrat, received 40% of the vote in his unsuccessful bid to represent the heavily Republican 5th District in Congress.

Dino Rossi, Tlingit, and John McCoy, Tulalip, were serving in the state Senate in 2017; and Jeff Morris, Tsimshian, and Jay Rodne, Bad River Band of Chippewa, were serving in the state House of Representatives.

Zachary De Wolf, Chippewa Cree, was elected in 2017 to the Seattle School Board. Denise Juneau, Mandan Hidatsa Arikara, an educator and former Montana congressional candidate, was hired as the school district superintendent in 2018. And Chandra Hampson, Ho Chunk, was elected to the school board in 2019.

All of them had left office by 2023, however. Lekanoff is confident of a renewed interest among Native Americans to seek office outside of tribal government. She calls this period in Washington’s political history an exciting time.

“We have a number of Native Americans running for school boards or asking to be appointed to commissions and boards across the state,” she said.

Referring to Depoe, Iyall and Tyler, she said, “What you might not see is the thread — their ancestral bloodlines come from Washington state. How powerful is that? The last legislator whose bloodlines came from Washington state was John McCoy,” she said. “My bloodlines don’t come from Washington state. The only lens through which I know and understand Washington is the lens of Washington tribes. It is, and always will be, their land, their waters, their salmon, and they are sharing it — and their Indigenous knowledge — with those who now live here.”

‘It’s about relationships’

Among Native legislators, the late John McCoy of the Tulalip Tribes emerges in political discussions as the Great Collaborator, the senator who welcomed questions from his colleagues and helped legislators understand sovereignty and treaties and Indian law.

McCoy served more than 10 years in the Washington House of Representatives, 2003-2013; was appointed in 2013 to the state Senate to fill a vacancy; and was later elected to his first full Senate term. He resigned in 2020, citing health issues, and died in 2023.

During his tenure as a legislator, he sponsored monumental legislation requiring public schools to include Native history and culture in their social sciences and history curricula, and requiring the state to return a portion of sales tax revenue it collects at Quil Ceda Village, an incorporated community on the Tulalip Reservation, to help fund essential public services.

It took several years of compromise — and in the taxation case, a lawsuit — but in the end McCoy achieved his goals. Even after the state prevailed in the taxation lawsuit, the state saw it fair and just to enter into a revenue-sharing agreement with the Tulalip Tribes.

Lekanoff and Stearns are following McCoy’s example to help opposing sides find common ground and common benefit.