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Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola became the first Alaskan to win a full term in Congress on Wednesday, winning re-election along with Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who both defeated challengers endorsed by former President Donald Trump after state officials finished a final round of voting. counting
Peltola, who made history with her victory in August’s special election, and Murkowski, a senator for two decades, were leading after early vote counts. But victories for centrist lawmakers didn’t come until Wednesday, when the Alaska Division of Elections redistributed votes under the state’s new electoral vote system.
At a victory party at a downtown Anchorage brewery Wednesday night, Peltola told reporters the Alaskans have given him “a two-year contract.”
“And I’ll be happy to work for the Alaskans again, as long as they’ll have me,” she said. His victory, he added, shows that Alaskans “wholeheartedly embrace nonpartisanship and working together.”
In the race for governor, Republican Mike Dunleavy won re-election with more than 50 percent of the vote, avoiding the ranked election process.
Peltola and Murkowski had crossed party lines to support each other before the election, forming an alliance rooted in the similar space they occupy on the political spectrum. Their victories cap an election season in which voters across the country tend to show a preference for incumbents in battleground races.
“I am honored that Alaskans of all regions, backgrounds and party affiliations have once again placed their trust in me to continue working with them and on their behalf in the United States Senate,” Murkowski said. in a statement Wednesday night. “I look forward to continuing the important work ahead of us.”
The result was another blow for Trump in this year’s midterm elections. Many candidates affiliated with the former president and his polarizing positions fell short in battleground contests, and his overall record was mixed in competitive races where he endorsed. That list includes former Republican Gov. Sarah Palin, who challenged Peltola with Trump’s support, and Republican Kelly Tshibaka, a former state and federal official who ran against Murkowski with the former president’s support.
After the last round of ranked-choice voting, Murkowski had 53.7% of the vote to Tshibaka’s 46.3%. In the House race, Peltola had 55 percent of the vote to Palin’s 45 percent.
Peltola ran a locally focused campaign with traditional and unconventional Democratic platform planks: touting his support for abortion rights and “pro-fish” views, along with his support for a new oil project d ‘Alaska and the large collection of weapons that she and her family. maintains
Peltola’s victory secures his first full two-year term on Capitol Hill and follows his victory in August to temporarily fill his state’s only seat in the U.S. House, one that became vacant after the sudden death of Republican Rep. Don Young. Peltola also beat Palin in that race, becoming the first Alaska Native member of Congress and the first woman from her state to hold the seat.
Peltola is the first Democrat elected to Congress from Alaska since 2008, when Mark Begich unseated Republican Sen. Ted Stevens just months after Stevens was indicted for allegedly making false statements related to his financial disclosures.
Murkowski, meanwhile, will soon begin serving her fourth six-year term in the Senate, following her appointment to the chamber in 2002 by her father, then-newly elected Gov. Frank Murkowski. His campaign highlighted his work to bring infrastructure money to Alaska, his support for the state’s fishing and oil industries, and his close relationships with Alaska Native constituencies.
Trump has long vowed to impeach the senator and predicted in 2018 that she will “never recover” politically for voting against one of his Supreme Court nominees, Brett M. Kavanaugh. Tshibaka joined Trump at a rally held in an Anchorage field in July.
Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, also appeared with Trump in July. He lost both the special and general elections after splitting the conservative vote with Nick Begich III, a Republican from a prominent Alaska Democratic family. (Begich is a nephew of Mark Begich and a grandson of Nick Begich Sr., who held Alaska’s U.S. House seat before a plane carrying him across the state disappeared in 1972.)
Jim Lottsfeldt, a centrist political consultant who worked with pro-Murkowski and pro-Peltola super PACs, said he’s not sure Trump’s endorsements have offered Palin and Tshibaka much help. Alaska, he said, is small enough that many people who follow politics judge candidates based on personal interactions.
“We all have these opinions that we’ve earned by looking someone in the eye,” Lottsfeldt said in a telephone interview Tuesday. “Donald Trump won’t tell me anything about Sarah Palin that I don’t already know.”
This year’s election was Alaska’s first under the state’s new voting framework, which residents narrowly approved in a 2020 citizens’ initiative that was partially funded and led by Murkowski allies. The system overhauled primary elections by eliminating partisan races and advancing the top four vote-getters from a single open ballot to the general election.
In general elections, voters can rank candidates based on their preferences. If no candidate receives a majority of first-choice votes, the candidate with the lowest vote total is eliminated and the votes of that candidate’s supporters are reallocated to their next choices. The process is repeated until two candidates remain and a winner can be declared.
Several Alaska conservatives, led by Palin, have attacked the new system as complicated and unreliable, even though there is no evidence of any technical problems or foul play. At an event last week, the former governor was the first person to sign a new petition to get rid of the system.
The repeal campaign could face an uphill battle. One avenue for critics is repeal by the Alaska Legislature, where a number of seats will now be filled by candidates who won races this year at least in part because of the new voting process.
Residents could also repeal the system through a citizens’ initiative. But polls released by supporters after the August primary election showed more than 60 percent of Alaskans approving.
Even if the new electoral system remains intact, Peltola’s allies expect him to face serious challenges from Republicans when his term expires in two years.
One dynamic that propelled Peltola this year was a national Democratic network that helped her raise more than $5.5 million through mid-October, more than triple the $1.7 million and $1.6 million that Palin and Begich respectively raised in campaign contributions.