Sarah Palin, who filed for Congress on April 1 to fill the seat of the late Congressman Don Young, seems genuinely surprised at Alaska’s crazy new voting system. On her Instagram page, it’s almost as if she had not been paying attention for the past two years to the mischief that Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s former campaign team had put together — a wild and wooly jungle primary with no party sideboards, and a Ranked Choice Voting general election. Voters approved Ballot Measure 2 in 2020, as they were told it would remove Outside “dark money” from elections.
Palin also mentioned the mess with Ranked Choice Voting on the Mike Porcaro Show on Tuesday, saying Alaskans had been “snookered” into approving it as a ballot measure. On the show, she declined to endorse Gov. Mike Dunleavy.
In her Instagram post, Palin used a photo of herself that harkens back to the days when she was running for Vice President with Sen. John McCain. She wore a lace-hemmed skirt and spike heels and the crowd grasped at her hands. Her post referenced a column by Tuckerman Babcock, former Alaska Republican Party Chairman, in Must Read Alaska, which describes the nightmare that Ballot Measure 2 has created in Alaska.
Palin is in a field of 48 candidates that include Nick Begich III (R), the grandson of the last Alaskan to serve in Congress before Don Young. Also running are Don Young’s campaign co-chairs for 2022, Tara Sweeney and Josh Revak, both Republicans. Al Gross is running as a no-party candidate but has the support of the Democrats. John Coghill, a former state senator from Fairbanks, and Andrew Halcro, a former state representative from Anchorage, are also known names in Alaska. The primary election for the temporary place holding seat for Congress is June 11. The top four vote-getters will proceed to the Aug. 16 special general election, to be held on the same day as the regular primary election.
