Annessa Hartman ran for the Oregon House of Representatives in part to give Native Americans a voice in the state capital.
She became their eyes as well.
Hartman, who is Haudenosaunee, was reading a bill in early March and saw that the nine tribal nations that share geography with Oregon were excluded from the state’s observance of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
The bill specified that representatives of Oregon’s diverse communities be involved: Black, Asian American, Pacific Islander, Hispanic. But the bill didn’t call for input from those who were stewards of the land “long before the colonists’ declaration,” The Oregonian reported.
Hartman brought the omission to the attention of her colleagues, who voted 55-2 to involve representatives of tribal nations in planning the observance. State Rep. Tawna Sanchez, Shoshone-Bannock, told ICT and Noeledrich the state nearly committed a grievous error.
“The tribes are, in fact, sovereign nations, and if something you are doing essentially excludes them from the process, that is a problem,” Sanchez said. “If something affects them in some way, shape or form, you need to be having those conversations with them ahead of time.”
The 60-member Oregon House of Representatives includes five Native members, all of whom are seeking re-election Nov. 5.
Democrats Hartman and Sanchez, and Republican Rick Lewis, are facing opponents. Two others, Democrat Andrea Valderrama and Republican Emily McIntire, are unopposed.
Native Americans have long been underrepresented in elective offices in Oregon. Since statehood in 1859, only seven Indigenous persons have been elected to the state House of Representatives, five of them within the last seven years: Jacqueline S. Taylor, Citizen Potawatomi, 1991-2000; Teresa Alonso León, a Mexican-American of Purepecha heritage, 2017-2023; Sanchez, 2017-present; Lewis, a descendant of the Bridge River Band in British Columbia, 2017-present; Valderrama, a Peruvian-American of Inca heritage, 2021-present; Hartman, 2023-present; and McIntire, Muscogee (Creek) Nation, 2023-present.
A tight race
Of all the Native candidates for reelection, Hartman faces perhaps the toughest challenge.
Hartman, who was elected in 2022, wrote bipartisan bills last session proposing jail-based medications for opioid-use disorders, COVID-relief funds for Oregon cultural organizations, penalties for manufacturing counterfeit drugs, streamlining the filing of restraining orders, and establishing a task force on improving the safety of behavioral health workers. She co-sponsored 33 bills.
Hartman’s election to a second term representing the 40th District, which includes Gladstone and Oregon City, is not assured. She was elected by a 181-vote margin in 2022, receiving 16,632 votes to Republican Adam Baker’s 16,451. In November, she will face Republican Michael Steven Newgard, the deputy clerk in Clackamas County.
By the third week of September, Hartman had raised $123,153 for her 2024 campaign and spent $137,549, the difference covered by $36,683 in campaign funds left over from 2022. Newgard reported raising $69,290 and spending $68,345, but much of that took place during the primary.
Half of Newgard’s contributions came from one source: Bring Balance to Salem, a political action committee led by Nike founder Phil Knight, who is among Oregon’s wealthiest residents, and Red Emmerson, owner of timber company Sierra Pacific Industries and the largest landowner in the United States. Bring Balance to Salem has contributed several million dollars to Republican candidates in Oregon since it was founded in 2021.
Newgard said he’s answered the call to service – which he said includes piloting a MEDEVAC helicopter in Syria, fighting Oregon wildfires, and evacuating injured hikers from Mount Hood – and added, “I’m ready to answer again as your next state representative.”
On his campaign website, Newgard said his priorities are crime, homelessness and a higher threshold for passing tax increases. Newgard lists two endorsements on his campaign website: Oregon House Republican Leader Jeff Helfrich of Hood River and the Oregon Gun Owners Association.
Hartman’s campaign manager, Darren Golden, said Hartman has proven herself to be a good legislator over the last two years.
“She has a good record to run on,” he said. “Voters asked her to focus on transportation funding options other than tolling, to work on lowering utility bills, and to work with public safety agencies on addiction, housing and homelessness. She did that.”
According to her campaign website, Hartman is endorsed by Oregon’s two U.S. senators; 23 local and state elected officials; and 36 unions and political action committees, including Oregon Chiefs of Police and the Oregon Coalition of Police and Sheriffs.
On the ballot
Sanchez faces retired Marine Corps Major Tim LeMaster, a Republican, in her bid for another term representing the 43rd District in overwhelmingly Democratic North/Central Portland. They ran against each other in 2022; Sanchez received 33,466 votes then to LeMaster’s 2,943.
Lewis is seeking a fourth term representing the 18th District, which includes the city of Silverton, where he once served as police chief and later as mayor. He is being challenged by Democrat Karyssa Dow, a former precinct committee person and member of the Silverton city Affordable Housing Task Force.
Lewis is vice chairman of the House Interim Committee on Emergency Management, General Government, and Veterans; and a member of House committees on ways and means, public safety, and the judiciary, according to his House website.
Lewis said most voters he’s spoken with — Republicans and Democrats — share the same concerns.
“Their most serious concerns are universal: cost of living, crime and community safety, the failures to address mental health and drug addiction and recovery, and housing,” Lewis told ICT + Noeledrich.
“More than a decade of one-party rule and the failure of the majority party to address these concerns in any meaningful way is foremost in the minds of many. [It’s] time for change.”
Valderrama is unopposed for reelection from the 47th District, which includes East Portland.
McIntire, whose 56th District includes Klamath Falls, is also unopposed for reelection to a second term. According to her House website, she is vice chairperson of the House Interim Committee on Higher Education and a member of the Joint Committee on Public Education Appropriation, Joint Ways and Means Subcommittee on Education, and the House Interim Committee on Education.
McIntire received 7,122 votes from Republican voters in the primary, but was also the choice of 47 Democrats who took the time to write her name in.
“I hope being unopposed means that the Democrat Party saw that I was willing and wanting to work across the aisle,” she told ICT + Noeledrich. “I am looking forward to next session, hopeful to put politics aside, and continue to work to make the citizens’ legislature beneficial to all citizens.”
Meanwhile, a Native candidate for City Council in Portland dropped his candidacy to join another candidate’s campaign.
Deian Salazar, a Pueblo descendant who serves on state commissions related to child foster care and autism, was a candidate for Portland City Council District 1 but ended his campaign in late September to become fellow candidate Terrence Hayes’s policy adviser and deputy field manager.
“I am doing this because service and serving the people is not just about running for office,” Salazar told KOIN 6 News’ Eye on Northwest Politics. “It’s about making the right decisions and putting others before yourself and being in the role that you believe is most effective [in] effecting change.”
‘This isn’t just about us’
Of Oregon’s population of 4.2 million, some 100,000 identify as Indigenous Americans – most of them Native American, as well as Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander, according to the U.S. Census. The number doubles when counting Mexican-Americans who identify as Indigenous. Portland has the ninth-largest urban Native population in the U.S.
The nine federally recognized tribes in Oregon directly employed 8,200 people in 2022, according to the state Employment Development Department. Tribal economies generated $641.9 million in revenue. Of that, $182.9 million supported tribal healthcare services, social services, and public works. Some $108.5 million in tax revenue was paid to the federal government, with $34.9 million going to the state of Oregon and $16.4 million going to local governments. More than $8 million helped support local nonprofits.
Sanchez said Native candidates may come from different places, but they have this in common: they are concerned about how their decisions will affect seven generations from now. A Valderrama bio said she is guided by Incan principles of Ayni (reciprocity), Llank’ay (work), Munay (love), and Yanay (knowledge) “as well as her core values of racial, gender, and economic justice in her movement-building efforts.”
“I really do try to help people understand that it is not just about us, that inequity is not just about people of color,” Sanchez said. “It’s about poor White people. It’s about people who maybe just didn’t grow up in the right spot, with poverty or incarceration or lack of education or lack of access to education — you know, whatever factors in your life put you in the space that didn’t work out.”
She continued, “I often remind people that the theory of ‘pull yourself up by your own bootstraps’ only exists for the people who have access to boots, who have access to the store to buy the boots, who have access to the jobs, the education, all of the things that you need to get anywhere near buying the boots. And if somehow all of that access has been denied in some way, shape or form, the ability to pull yourself up by your bootstraps does not exist. And if I can help people understand that, then they’re going to support my bill to make sure that somebody has the ability to buy the boots.”
Sanchez had mixed success attracting Republican co-sponsors to her legislation. One bill required at least one of the commissioners of the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission to have a background in public health; one Republican signed on as co-sponsor. Two Republicans co-sponsored her bill directing the System of Care Advisory Council to establish a subcommittee on youth behavioral health.
Three Republicans co-sponsored Sanchez’s bill permitting a police officer to take a person who is publicly intoxicated or under the influence of controlled substances to the individual’s home, a treatment facility or a sobering facility. Ten Republicans co-sponsored a bill increasing the cap on amounts held in the Oregon Rainy Day Fund.
But no GOP co-sponsors signed up for Sanchez’s bill “prohibiting discrimination when selecting textbooks, instructional materials, program materials or library books that are used in the public schools of this state.
Several bills she co-sponsored were signed into law. One established a Task Force on Specialty Courts. Another allows the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission to issue temporary service permits to an applicant for a service permit.
Another bill streamlines the process by which restraining orders are filed, and another gives owners of consumer electronic equipment the same access to documentation, tools and parts that are made available to authorized service providers.
Sanchez said she’s working on legislation that would increase access to legal services in the criminal justice system “so people can have their civil legal situations taken care of and dealt with before they get out of prison, so those things are not hanging over their heads when they get out of prison and they can have somewhat of a fresh start.”
‘Our first obligation is to the tribe’
Native Americans are underrepresented in legislatures of neighboring states as well.
In Washington, which shares geography with 29 federally recognized tribes, three of 147 state legislators are Native American.
In California, which shares geography with about 110 federally recognized tribes, only one of 120 legislators is Native American: Assemblyman James Ramos, a former chairman of the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians in San Bernardino.
Of California’s 483 mayors, two are Indigenous: Tasha Cerda, Tohono O’odham, of Gardena, and Todd Gloria, Tlingit, of San Diego.
Ramos’s aunt, Carla Rodriguez, a former chairwoman of the San Manuel Band, speculated on why there’s a lack of Native candidates for offices outside tribal government.
“I think what really stops them from doing it is the political nature,” she said. “I think some Native people don’t feel comfortable being within that realm of politics. It’s hard to jump into that arena because we’re so used to our own arena. We live in two different worlds, but this is our territory, this is our land, and this is what we’ll die with.”
Rodriguez’s daughter, Leticia Prieto, the elected treasurer of the San Manuel Band, agreed.
“I think, just from a bandwidth perspective, it’s hard for us to have the obligation and duty here as well as serve outside of the tribe,” Prieto said. “Like my mom said, you have not only what your tribe wants to see you accomplish from a legislative standpoint, but what other constituents need. And our first priority as tribal people is the tribe.”
Raven Casas, a San Manuel Band Youth Council member who is Prieto’s daughter and Rodriguez’s granddaughter, lobbies on behalf of Murdered and Missing Indigenous Persons. She said she’d like to someday run for the state legislature.
“I think what keeps a lot of Natives from seeking positions in the legislature is since the day they were born, their obligation and duty has been to serve their tribe, to carry on the teachings,” Casas said. “It’s hard to step away from that. Taking a seat in state or federal government would be cool because you’d be able to have a bigger voice in making decisions for your people and other tribes in the area. But again, from day one, your No. 1 obligation and priority is your tribe.”
OREGON AT A GLANCE
- State population: 4.2 million.
- Native population: About 100,000 (194,060 when counting Mexican-Americans who identify as Indigenous).
- House of Representatives: 60 members (35 Democrats, 25 Republicans).
- Senate: 30 members (17 Democrats, 12 Republicans, one Independent).
- Natives currently in the legislature: Five.
- Native American political firsts in Oregon: Clara Latourell Larsson, Chinook, first female mayor of Troutdale (1914-1922). Jacqueline S. Taylor, Citizen Potawatomi, first Native American member of the state House of Representatives (1991-2000). Teresa Alonso León, Purapecha, first Indigenous Mexican elected to the state House (2017-2023).
* Correction: This story has been updated to add two additional Native candidates in Oregon who are on the ballot in the Nov. 5, 2024, election. There are five Native candidates seeking reelection to the state Legislature.
This story is co-published by Noeledrich and ICT, a news partnership that covers Indigenous communities in the Pacific Northwest.
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