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On August 31, Democrat Mary Peltola won the special election for Alaska's sole U.S. House seat. She defeated former governor and Republican Sarah Palin, who was expecting a political comeback.
Per the unofficial results announced by the Alaska Division of Elections, Peltola bagged the seat after the results were tabulated on ranked-choice ballots. She will now serve the remainder of the late Republican U.S. Rep. Don Young’s term, who passed away in March 2022 and held the seat for nearly 50 years.
News outlet NPR reports that Mary Peltola won by a slight margin, getting 91,206 votes while Palin got 85,987.
With her victory, Peltola became the first Alaskan native in Congress. She is also the first Democrat since the late U.S. Rep. Nick Begich, who passed away in 1972 and was succeeded by Young in 1973.
All you need to know about Mary Peltola
Mary Peltola is a 48-year-old native of Anchorage, Alaska and is a Yup'ik woman. She is a graduate of the University of Northern Colorado and the University of Alaska.
After leaving the state legislature, she started a lobbying business called Sattler Strategies and worked at Donlin Gold as the manager of community development and sustainability.
She was the interim executive director of the Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission and a councilwoman in Bethel, Alaska, from 2011 to 2013. From 1999 to 2009, she served in the Alaska House of Representatives.
While speaking to media house Anchorage Daily News, Mary Peltola discussed how Congress should work to safeguard abortion rights and systemize Roe v. Wade. Elaborating on how to have safer gun rules in the country, she made points like:
"Secure storage laws, reasonable waiting periods, and universal background checks can make all of us safer while still preserving the rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment."
Mary Peltola was up against Sarah Palin, Nick Begich III and Al Gross for the U.S. House seat of Alaska. However, Gross left the race midway through, putting a lot of Democratic political clout behind Peltola.
The elections were held on August 16 and the results came 15 days later, when it was revealed that Mary Peltola was leading in the special election.
As per CNN, Sarah Palin was disappointed by the results of August 31, and criticized the ranked-choice vote. She even dubbed it to be a "convoluted and confusing" process. Palin said:
"Though we're disappointed in this outcome, Alaskans know I'm the last one who'll ever retreat. Instead, I'm going to reload. With optimism that Alaskans learn from this voting system mistake and correct it in the next election, let's work even harder to send an America First conservative to Washington in November."
Sarah Palin was planning on coming back into politics 14 years after John McCain chose her to become the Republican vice presidential nominee in 2008. During her run for the House seat, she became known far and wide and was also endorsed by former American president Donald Trump.
However, after losing, she resigned midway through her term in the governor's office in 2009.
