Palin advances in special primary for Alaska's House seat

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Three well-known candidates lead by former Alaska governor and vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin have advanced to the general election in Alaska’s special House race, NBC News projects.

Republican Nick Begich, the grandson of former Rep. Nick Begich, D-Alaska, and nonpartisan Al Gross, a surgeon, have also advanced to the general election, according to NBC News’ projection.

In August, Alaska voters will rank four candidates to determine who secures the House seat for the final few months of the late Rep. Don Young’s term. Young held the seat for decades and died in March.

This is the state’s first use of open primaries and ranked-choice voting, a system that was implemented after a ballot measure in 2020.

Here’s how the new voting system works: Alaskans cast ballots for single candidates in an open, nonpartisan primary race. The top four vote-getters advance to the general election, in which voters rank four candidates in order of preference. Any candidate who gets more than 50 percent of the vote wins the race. If no one gets a majority, the candidate with the fewest first-choice votes is eliminated, and ballots cast for the eliminated candidate are recast for voters’ second choices. The elimination and retabulation process continues until only two candidates are left. The candidate with the most votes wins.

The special election primary was conducted by mail, so final results could be days away. Election officials will accept ballots up to 10 days after election day as long as they are postmarked by election day, June 11th.

Former Alaska state Rep. Mary Peltola (D) was projected to defeat former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) to win the special election to fill the remainder of the late Rep. Don Young’s (R-Alaska) term in the House, a stunning upset that makes her the first Alaska Native in Congress.

Peltola, a Yup’ik Eskimo, will also be the first Democrat to hold the seat in decades. The last time a member of her party was was elected to represent the state’s at-large congressional district was in 1971.

Her apparent victory came after votes were tabulated late Wednesday as part of the state’s new ranked-choice voting system.

Prior to her congressional run to fill Young’s seat, Peltola represented the southwestern Bethel region as a state lawmaker for a decade. She has also served on the Bethel City Council and Orutsararmiut Native Council Tribal Court.

Peltola also ran in the primary for the same seat but whose term would begin in 2023. She advanced in the primary, as she was one of the top four vote-getters in Alaska’s open primary system.

In the general election, which is slated for November, the state will also use ranked-choice voting, where the candidate who receives more than 50 percent of the vote prevails in the election.

But if no one gets more than half the votes, the candidate with the fewest votes gets knocked out and any voters who chose that eliminated candidate as their first pick have their second-choice votes applied to the applicable candidates. The process continues until one candidate receives more than half the votes.

Palin? Are they insane?

They're going from Don Young, one of the few sane Republicans there was, to the woman who singlehandedly set forth the events leading to the Tea Party, Trumpism and 1/6 into motion?

Although John McCain picking Sarah Palin as his running mate, in 2008, was indeed a harbinger of things to come, I wouldn't give her credit for "singlehandedly" setting forth the events leading to the Tea Party, Trumpism, etc.

Regarding the history of the Tea Party movement, see this Wikipedia page.

Trump was pushed to the foreground by the revival of "paleo-conservativism," including various major right wing websites such as Breitbart News.

Anyhow, I'm glad Sarah Palin lost the recent primary.