Votes are still being counted to determine fourth place, with two candidates each making history as the first Alaskan native to be elected to Congress – former Democrat Mary Peltola and Republican Tara Sweeney, which was supported by a coalition of state-owned companies – ranked fourth and fifth among the ballots recorded so far. Santa Claus, a North Pole councilor and Democratic Socialist, is in sixth place. Lawyer and gardening columnist Jeff Lowenfels, former Republican Sen. John Coggill; Yang, is also among the candidates. The results came after one of the nation’s wildest primaries – one in which Palin ran. Claus; Begich III, the Conservative backed by the Alaska Republican Party from the state’s most prominent Democratic family. and a host of former young assistants and allies. Under Alaska’s new electoral system, all-party candidates, and non-partisans, run on the same ballot, and the top four, regardless of party affiliation, advance to the general election. Identifying the four candidates who will qualify for the special House race can take time: Alaska was posting ballots to each voter and will continue to count those that were sealed until June 11 in the following days. The final results will be classified only as a final count 10 days after the qualifier. The top four who finish in the qualifiers will face off in a special general election on August 16, with the winner going to Congress. It will be the first election in Alaska, as state voters marginally approved an initiative in 2020 for change. According to the ranking system, if no candidate receives more than 50% of the votes in the first round, then a second round of counting will take place, with the votes of the last in the first place then going to the second round of these voters. choice, and so on. The task could be full for Palin: She is by far the most well-known candidate in the race, but she could suffer if a large number of Democrat voters remain angry at her decision to step down as governor in 2009. less than three years after her only term, they rank her last. Filling the former Young House, which represented the state in Parliament from 1973 until his death in March, is a complicated process. The winner on August 16 will serve the remaining months of his term until January. However, August 16 is also the date for Alaska’s regular qualifiers, in which voters will vote again to determine which four candidates will run in the November general election for the full two-year term. It is possible that the results of the two races, with many of the same important candidates, will be different. Palin began her campaign with almost direct support from former President Donald Trump, who said she reciprocated her timely support for his 2016 presidential candidacy. She held a rally in Anchorage in early June to which Trump called. But she was a relatively quiet campaigner and has not clarified how she sees herself fitting into today’s GOP in Washington. Begich III began his campaign for Congress before Young died. He had criticized Young’s tendency to raise federal dollars for projects in Alaska, advocating a more conservative fiscal approach to spending. He is the nephew of former U.S. Sen. Mark Begich, a Democrat, and the grandson of Nick Begich, a Democratic lawmaker who held office until 1972 when a plane he was traveling on disappeared. Young replaced him and was the only person to represent Alaska in Parliament since. Gross was backed by Democrats in his failed 2020 Senate race against Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan. This time, however, the Democratic Party of Alaska sharply criticized Gross after suggesting he could join a Republican caucus. He has since reversed his campaign, citing a leaked Supreme Court opinion draft that would have ousted Roe against Wade, but the ruling Democratic Party continued to urge voters to choose one of the six registered Democrats in the race. Peltola, a Democrat who spent 10 years in the Alaskan legislature, once represented a district about the size of Oregon. If elected, she would become the first Native American to represent Alaska in Congress. “Whether it’s me or someone else, I just think it’s time for an Alaskan native to be a member of our congressional delegation,” Peltola said in an interview last week. Sweeney, the former Assistant Secretary of State for Indian Affairs at the US Department of the Interior, is backed by Alaskan native companies. Sweeney was the co-chair of Young’s campaign. She would also be the first Native to be elected to represent Alaska in Congress.
