Native voters could swing US elections, but they're asking politicians: What have you done for us?

DILKON, Ariz. — Felix Ashley’s red Toyota sends a plume of dust billowing along the sloping hills and boulders he traverses hours every week to pump water – the same roadway voters walk miles every four years to cast their ballots in presidential elections.

Here on this forgotten swath of the Navajo Nation, the largest Native American reservation in the United States, hardship is embedded into day-to-day life.

Nearly a third of homes like Ashley’s still don’t have running water. Soaring unemployment and poverty has pushed young Navajos, including most of Ashley’s children, to leave their sacred lands in search of jobs. Logistical and legal obstacles have long stood in the way of Arizona’s 420,000 Native citizens casting their vote.

“People lose trust in the government and they don’t – you don’t – care to vote anymore. People don’t get what they were promised,” said 70-year-old Ashley, whose family offers rides to hitchhikers to polls on Election Day.

Yet it is Native voters like him who could be key to winning Arizona and some of the most contested swing states in November. In 2020, Arizona voted for a Democratic president for the first time in decades, with President Joe Biden winning the race by around 10,500 votes.

Native Americans – who make up 5.2% of Arizona– saw a surge in turnout, voting in large numbers for the Democratic Party, according to a data analysis by the Associated Press.

The victory turned the heads of politicians from both parties, who now flock to some of the most remote swaths of Arizona as they try to close razor thin margins. Democrats are hoping to repeat the feat, while Republicans see an opportunity to use Native voters’ frustration with the economy as a chance to sweep up new votes.

“The Native vote has power, because they’re able to decide the next presidential election. Everybody knows that it’s going to come down to 15,000 or so votes in Arizona,” said Jacqueline De León, a voting rights attorney with the Native American Rights Fund and member of the Isleta Pueblo.

One Senate candidate hiked down the wall of the northern Havasu Canyon to a tribe accessible only by helicopter, mule or hours-long treks to win over votes. Another, tailed by floats in a local parade in Tuba City, roared “This is all in your hands. … Let’s show the rest of this state, the rest of this country that the Navajo vote is strong!”

Local fairs and flea markets are painted with blue and red campaign signs reading “Trump low prices” and others written in Native slang “Stoodis Harris” or “Let’s do this Harris." Radio ads for both presidential candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris ring out on the radio every 30 minutes in homes far from the reach of cellphone signals.

But Native voters in Arizona have a simple question for candidates: What have you ever done for us?

A long history of obstacles

The feeling of being forgotten is one that has long simmered among the 22 federally recognized tribes across Arizona, from rock homes pressed on the edge of high plateaus of the Hopi reservation, to the barren plains where Ashley pumps water to his family.

Dozens of people who spoke to the AP in the final weeks before the election expressed frustration with Democratic-leaning tribal governments, as bureaucracy and corruption scandals tie up the most basic development efforts, and politicians in Washington, who they say rarely use their seat at the table to push for them.

That was the feeling for Ashley, a Democrat, as he pumped water into a tank in the back of his truck. The Vietnam Marine veteran struggles to get care for post-traumatic stress disorder due to long distances he has to travel to a veteran’s hospital. With high inflation, the family must scrape together money for the most basic things like gas to go visit a dying family member.

“You are always promised jobs, you’re promised running water,” he said. “But there is nothing out here.”

At the same time, some voters face almost insurmountable obstacles to voting.

Some tribes have to travel up to 285 miles to cast their ballots, according to the Native American Rights Fund. Homes on many reservations don’t have addresses needed to register to vote, so members of grassroots organizations walk door-to-door, helping people to register by tracking their geolocation and pinpointing it on a map. Some older Navajos don’t speak much English, and organizers provide them detailed information in their native tongue.

“We go the extra mile. This is out in the middle of nowhere almost, and this is where people are not being reached,” said 45-year-old Navajo Lacosta Johnson, a volunteer at the non-partisan group Arizona Native Vote, who drove hours one Saturday night to the outskirts of the reservation to mobilize voters.

Compounding logistical hurdles is historic voter suppression and abuses of Native communities. Native people were first recognized as U.S. citizens 100 years ago, but Arizona prevented them from voting until 1948, arguing they were “incompetent." Many states used English literacy tests to further block voters from casting ballots until the 1970s.

Since then, legal experts say a mix of voter dilution tactics and burdensome election laws have blocked the Native vote, as recently as 2022. That's when the Republican-controlled Arizona Legislature and then-GOP governor passed a law requiring voters to provide proof of residency and an address for presidential voting.

The U.S. Supreme Court later struck down the measure, but Native communities have seen thousands of ballots thrown out in past elections due to similar statutes. Native voters have their ballots rejected at higher rates than other demographics in the state, according to Arizona State University’s Indian Legal Clinic.

The result: People are highly skeptical of promises made year after year but never fulfilled.

“These incredibly slim margins mean that cutting off a community of a thousand voters has a huge substantive impact,” said De León, the attorney. “Right now, many Native Americans don’t have their full rights of citizenship because it’s just too hard to vote.”

Both parties campaign on Native lands

Democrats have long claimed an advantage in number of votes on reservations like the Navajo Nation. They’ve boasted a heavy presence on Native lands. In the final weeks of the election, Harris met with Native American youth in Arizona, telling them in a campaign video, “your voice is your vote, and your vote is your power.” President Joe Biden and vice presidential hopeful Tim Walz also paid visits last week to reservations in Arizona.

“Time and time again, Donald Trump had to do what was right for Indian Country and he chose the opposite,” Walz said, promising to work for Native voters.

But they now face a strong campaign push by Republicans among Native voters in an attempt to peel off votes.

The Republican Party has opened its first campaign headquarters on the Navajo Nation, said Halee Dobbins, Arizona communications director of the Republican National Committee, and started to set up in local fairs long frequented by Democratic organizers.

“In 2020, we lost the election by 10,000 votes and we’ve seen that there is such a stronghold of the Native American vote by Democrats for decades, essentially,” Dobbins said. “We’re seeing a huge shift towards the Republican party given the issues that are top of mind for Native American voters – the economy, inflation, cost of living."

Dozens of Native voters from across the state who spoke to the AP echoed Dobbins in ranking inflation and the economy as their top priorities, though most leaned Democratic or asked why they would bother to vote.

In mid-October, Trump’s campaign invited a group of Navajo supporters like 61-year-old Francine Bradley-Arthur to sit behind him during a rally, where Trump gave a shout out to a conservative tribal leader.

Bradley-Arthur, a former Democrat, said she began to campaign for Trump, in part, because she felt Native communities often didn’t feel the payoff of longtime support for Democrats. It’s a sentiment shared by Latino, Black and other minority voters across the U.S., causing a moment of reckoning for the party.

“We got up at 5 o’clock this morning to drive down here. We want to show that Native Americans support him,” she said, among roaring crowds of Trump supporters.

Meanwhile, Democratic Senate candidate Ruben Gallego went as far as to trek hours down a canyon to meet with one of the most remote tribes in North America in the weeks before the election, where he’s locked in a tight race against Republican Kari Lake, who has promoted false claims that Trump won the 2020 election in Arizona.

He hoped to connect with voters in the Havasupai reservation, which has only 156 registered voters, to fulfill a campaign pledge to visit all the Native American tribes in Arizona. The tribe is so rural that election authorities helicopter ballots and election supplies in and out of the canyon.

Gallego said he’s heard criticism that politicians only visit bigger and more accessible tribes, and that few in Washington know how to work with tribes to provide aid. Lake, his competitor, has also made campaign appearances on the Navajo Nation.

“They do feel like they’re left behind. And a lot of it is because there’s been negligence by both parties,” Gallego told The Associated Press. “We just can’t take advantage of the vote. We assume that, you know, the same amount of people will come out every year. And that’s not actually the case.”

Speaking with Democratic-leaning Havasupai voters about their fight against a uranium mine they warn could poison their waters, Gallego was met with skepticism from some like Dinolene Caska, a tribal leader.

“For me, it’s whoever is going to support Indigenous issues. It’s not just Republicans or Democrats,” Caska said. This year she planned to vote for Democrats because Democratic lawmakers have backed the tribe in the fight.

Who will fight for Native rights?

Many other Navajo voters will also stick with the Democrats this year. Ashley, the Marine still plans to vote for Harris, just as he voted for Biden four years ago.

For Ashley, the deciding factor for this election was the fight for water rights, long championed by Democratic members of Congress, and social spending he hoped would trickle down to them. He and his family have wrinkled their noses at racist comments made by Trump during the campaign, seeing it as a sign that Republicans don’t have minority interests at heart.

But for other Navajo, this is the year they are willing to try something new.

Just down the road from Ashley, 68-year-old goat herder Richard Begay awakes at 6 a.m. sharp, flips on conservative radio and sips coffee out of a mug reading “TRUMP. Best President Ever” as the sun rises over his small wooden home.

Begay’s fierce loyalty to the Republican Party rests largely in the economy.

He blames Biden for inflation disproportionately affecting Native Americans because of the scarcity of jobs in their communities, which forced him and other family members to leave the reservation for many years. The prices of gas and food for his animals have squeezed his pocketbook.

“I remember gas was $1.60 here and when Biden came and went up over $3,” he said. “We don’t have the money to buy gas at outrageous prices. We pay more for less.”

He hopes Trump’s push for deregulation could usher in new economic opportunities on his reservation, citing the contentious construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline along tribal lands as a key example. Maybe then, young people would see more of a future in Dilkon. He believes under a Trump presidency, development would increase, which would bring some optimism.

But for now, he guides his goats along the rugged mountains, little changed over the course of generations his family has dwelled there.

Even with his hope for change, he voiced a sentiment that unites both Republican and Democratic-leaning voters on reservations across the state.

“We’re being used."