It's an unlikely Monday morning must-have list for a congressional candidate: trowel, water, hat, lunch.

But that's what Carol Miller's scribbled note says she needs to help replaster the adobe church at Picuris Pueblo, in the mountains northeast of Santa Fe.

It's a neighbor thing — she lives nearby, has been the pueblo's health planner and administers a joint tribal-community program. But it's also a chance to talk politics.

"One thing as an independent that's important is to go to things that are already happening ... talking to people, giving out cards," said Miller, who is running in Northern New Mexico's 3rd District.

For candidates with no political party machine — or only a "minor party" — behind them, the road to election is uphill, bumpy and most often a dead end.

It's tough to get on the ballot, tougher still to raise enough money to get on voters' radar screens. The overwhelming majority of voters are registered either as Democrat or Republican, and many are wedded to their parties' candidates.

"The hard part is getting my name and platform considered seriously by those who think the independents are marginal," said Ron Simmons, another independent running for Congress in the vast 3rd District, roughly the northern half of the state.

With the election barely four months away, Simmons says he's just gearing up. Recently certified for the ballot by state election officials — independents don't go through primaries — the political newcomer is trying to land appearances before civic groups.

"I'm not advertising a lot right now. I need to raise some money," he said.

He's been paying most campaign expenses from his own pocket. But as a self-employed home builder — he does one at a time — the housing downturn is taking a bite.

Miller, who has been down this road twice before as the Green Party nominee for the same congressional seat, shrugs off the notion that she's at a disadvantage.

She is powered by her confidence that of all the 3rd District candidates, she has the most Washington experience and is the only one who wouldn't need on-the-job training.

Next year, all three U.S. House members from New Mexico will be new. The incumbents gave up their seats to joust for the U.S. Senate seat of Republican Pete Domenici, who is retiring.

"The real issue is, we don't have anyone (running) that knows what the deal is in Congress," Miller said.

In addition to Miller and Simmons, the 3rd District lineup includes Democrat Ben Ray Luján, a Public Regulation Commissioner and son of state House Speaker Ben Luján, and Republican Dan East, a utilities contractor.

Some 55 percent of voters in the district are registered as Democrats, 29 percent as Republicans, 14 percent as independent — "decline to state" — and 2 percent as other.

Miller has been shuttling back and forth to Washington since the early 1980s, lobbying for and helping to write health-related legislation. She worked in the U.S. Public Health Service during the Reagan administration and was an appointee to the White House task force on health care headed by Hillary Clinton.

She is a consultant to the National Rural Health Association and heads the National Center for Frontier Communities, which she founded to raise awareness of issues facing isolated and sparsely populated areas.

When Miller ran as a Green for the 3rd District seat in a 1997 special election to choose a successor to Bill Richardson — who was leaving Congress for the Clinton administration — she received 17 percent of the vote. A Republican newcomer, Bill Redmond, defeated well-known Democrat Eric Serna and went to the U.S. House from the heavily Democratic district.

When Miller ran again the following year, she got less than 4 percent. Democrat Tom Udall, who was attorney general, took the seat from Redmond.

According to Albuquerque pollster and political observer Brian Sanderoff, independent or Green Party candidates historically have gotten into double digits "only when the Democratic candidate is perceived as being substandard."

That was the case with Serna and with Phil Maloof in Albuquerque in 1998, when Green candidate Bob Anderson nabbed 15 percent of the vote in a special election in the 1st Congressional District and 10 percent in the general election. Both times, the GOP's Heather Wilson defeated Maloof.

"Independents will have a harder time catching on in circumstances where the Democratic candidate is perceived as viable and credible," Sanderoff said.

Miller hates the word "spoiler," which has been used to describe her and Anderson. She says it's a concept Democrats use to raise money and keep the party's voters in line, reluctant even to consider another candidate.

"If we're going to say, 'Who knows how to work in Congress, who can get the job done for the district, who's not going to be torn apart by the party loyalty thing?' it's me," she said.