Alaska Republicans Target Each Other

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Last week a Democrat, Mary Peltola, won Alaska's only congressional seat.  Her victory entitles her to finish the term of former Alaska congressman, Don Young, a Republican who died in March.  Young's unfinished term runs out next January.

So Mary Peltola is not only busy getting acclimated to her new duties as a congresswoman, she is also gearing up a re-election campaign for this November - and she is running against two of the same people that she defeated last week:  Republicans Sarah Palin and Nick Begich.  Palin is a former governor of Alaska and John McCain's vice-presidential candidate in 2008.  She resigned from the governor's office in 2009 after serving only-half of one term and has spent the past decade raising money on social media and being a presence on reality television.  Begich, even though he is a Republican, comes from a long line of Alaskan Democratic politicians.

Peltola was able to win last week's election as a Democrat basically because Palin and Begich split the Republican vote.  Peltola received the most votes, but less that fifty percent.  Under the provisions of Alaska's new "ranked-choice" voting, the third-place finisher (Begich) was then eliminated and all "second-choice" votes cast on his ballots were counted - and Peltola got the most of those and then had more than fifty percent of the vote total.

The same candidates are on the ballot again in November along with an independent candidate, Chris Bye, and the same thing could happen again.

This past Monday was the final day for a candidate to have his or her name removed from the November ballot, and Sarah Palin all but demanded that Nick Begich drop out of the race and have his name taken off of the ballot.  She believes that she is the stronger candidate and that the Republican Party should unify behind her.  Begich, for his part, countered that it was Palin who should leave the race.  Begich regards himself as the true Alaskan, and there are those, even in the Republican Party, who see Palin as more of a visitor to the state than an actual resident.

Neither candidate, Palin or Begich, dropped out on Monday, and November looks as though it will be a rehash of last week's election, with the addition of the independent candidate. 

Just as an aside, both Republican candidates have nice things to say about Mary Peltola (Palin has referred to her as a "sweetheart"), and Peltola speaks well of both of them.   The only people that Sarah Palin and Nick Begich can't get along with seem to be each other!

Oh, well . . .