Palin and Murkowski highlight 2 Alaskan elections on Tuesday

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Alaskan voters get their first chance to use ranked-choice voting in a statewide contest Tuesday in a special election for the U.S. House of Representatives in which Sarah Palin seeks to return to a elected position.

Also, Republican US Senator Lisa Murkowski faces 18 challengers in a primary in which the top four candidates will advance to the general election in November.

The special election and regular primaries for the US Senate, US House of Representatives, Governor and Lieutenant Governor, and state legislative seats are on opposite sides of a two-sided ballot. It could take until August 31 to know the winner of the special election.

The three candidates competing in that race are Republicans Palin and Nick Begich and Democrat Mary Peltola. The winner will serve out the remainder of the late Rep. Don Young’s term. Young, a Republican, held the state’s only House seat for 49 years. He died in March.

Palin, the 2008 vice-presidential candidate and former governor of Alaska, renewed her calls to “drill, baby, drill” to increase oil production and said she would use her connections to benefit Alaska. She said the new voter-approved electoral system creates confusion and must be changed.

In a recent interview with Steve Bannon, Palin described it as the “weird, new voting system we have where you just mail-in ballots” and ranked voting. The special election is a traditional in-person voting election, and voters were able to request absentee ballots.

Begich, a businessman from a family of prominent Democrats, has spoken out harshly against Palin, seeking to cast her as a fame-chaser who gives up; Palin resigned during her term as governor in 2009. In a Begich ad, a woman says, “I’m voting for smart, not Sarah.”

Palin “doesn’t have a strong record of effectively defending the state and that’s not going to work for us,” Begich said in an interview.

Meanwhile, Palin has questioned Begich’s Republican credentials.

Peltola, a former legislator, recently served on a commission whose goal is to rebuild salmon resources in the Kuskokwim River. She has portrayed herself as an “Alaskan regular” and consensus builder. If she is successful, she would be the first Alaska Native woman elected to the House.

“Vote, vote, vote, vote for me literally twice,” Peltola told supporters in Juneau days before the election, urging them to turn out and tell their friends to vote.

All three said they planned to seek a full two-year term in the House, regardless of how the special election turns out. They, along with Republican Tara Sweeney, who was Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs at the US Department of the Interior during the Trump administration, were the top candidates in a 22-person field in the US House primary. USA

Sweeney also filed days before the special election as a write-in candidate for that race. Palin’s campaign sent an email Friday that erroneously said there were no official write-in candidates in the race.

Alaska’s election process, approved by voters in 2020 and used for the first time this year, pairs open primaries, in which all candidates in a race are on the ballot together, with ranked-voting general elections. The four candidates with the most votes in each primary race advance to the general election in November.

Bob Cruise left a Peltola fundraiser in Juneau on Friday with a yard sign. He said that all three of his granddaughters are of indigenous descent. “It’s important to me that they see an indigenous woman go to Washington, DC, as a representative from Alaska. That would mean a lot to me, especially one with the leadership skills and all the wonderful qualities that Mary has,” he said.

Murkowski, a moderate who has been in the Senate for nearly 20 years and at times at odds with her party, faces 18 candidates, including fellow Republican Kelly Tshibaka, who is backed by former President Donald Trump.

Trump has lashed out at Murkowski, who voted to convict him in his second impeachment trial after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. Trump was acquitted.

The most visible Democrat in the race is Pat Chesbro, an educated retiree who came on late and has struggled to gain traction in fundraising. The other candidates in the field have had lower profiles.

Candidates for governor and lieutenant governor run as teams in the primary. Republican Governor Mike Dunleavy is seeking re-election. He is running with Nancy Dahlstrom, who resigned as head of the state department of corrections to join the ticket. Former Gov. Bill Walker, an independent, is running with Heidi Drygas, who was his labor department commissioner. Democrat Les Gara, a former lawmaker, is running with Jessica Cook, a teacher.

Other tickets include Republican state Rep. Christopher Kurka, at Dunleavy’s right, with Paul Hueper, and Charlie Pierce, a Republican county mayor, running with Edie Grunwald.

Fifty-nine of the Legislature’s 60 seats are up for election, but only one primary race has more than four candidates.

Beth Kerttula, a former Democratic state legislator, said she supports Peltola, Walker and Murkowski. Kerttula, who was in the Legislature with Peltola and Murkowski, said for many Alaskans “what really matters is the person” versus the party.

“I mean, we all support Ted Stevens too,” he said, referring to the late Republican US senator. Alaska’s election history includes periods when there were open primaries.

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