Amber Carrillo, the Native American vote director for the New Mexico Campaign for Change, has been quite the busy woman over the past few months. And it’s all coming to a head right now.

From shepherding a near-clean-sweep of endorsements from the state’s 22 tribes to coordinating voter canvasses and registration drives, Carrillo has been working to galvanize a sleeper Democratic-leaning consistency that could easily make the difference in a close election.

And if the American Indian vote will make a difference in any state, it almost certainly will be New Mexico by dint of sheer numbers.

The Secretary of State’s office documents about 63,000 American Indian registered voters in New Mexico, out of a state population that hovers around 190,000. The registered Native American voters add up to nearly 11 percent of the state’s general election electorate.

Carrillo has a ready, if predictable, answer to the Albuquerque Journal’s Sunday endorsement of Republican John McCain, in which it declared the Arizona senator “a champion for Native Americans.”

“Sen. McCain really doesn’t have a solid record on supporting Native Americans’ needs,” Carrillo, a native of Laguna Pueblo, tells NMI.

McCain is the past chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, and he represents roughly half the Navajo Nation, the country’s most populous tribe, as an Arizona senator.

Carrillo is unmoved.

“There’s a substantial record that shows he’s denied a lot of funding to various programs for Native folks. He has denied funding for education programs that are culturally relevant, he’s denied funding for housing,” she says.

But that’s not the main reason the Barack Obama campaign worker is down on the GOP standard-bearer.

“McCain said that tribal lands belong to everybody,” Carrillo claims. She says the Republican made the comment to a closed session of six tribal leaders he met with in Albuquerque on Memorial Day, all of whom verified the anti-sovereignty remark, she says.

“I see that as a leader who’s not interested in having a government-to-government relationship,” Carillo adds. “Sen. Obama is someone who is interested in having sovereign nations meet with him as sovereign nations.”

Several requests to the New Mexico McCain campaign to comment for this story were not granted. Moreover, if you search on the keywords “Native American” on McCain’s official campaign Web site, the result is “no documents were found” in red type.

Obama’s home state of Illinois doesn’t have a single federally recognized tribe. But his party affiliation could make up for it. Carrillo said upwards of 80 percent of Native voters in New Mexico are fellow Democrats.

She notes that 35,000 American Indian votes have been cast in recent presidential campaigns in New Mexico, but says says she hopes to exceed that level on Tuesday.

“I guess I get a little competitive,” Carrillo says with a laugh.

The competition ends on Tuesday night.

This video is one of many specific pitches to Native American voters by the Obama campaign. Carrillo as well as other New Mexico activists are featured in it.