Democrat Peltola Defeats Palin In Special Alaska House Race Transcript

Speaker 1: (00:00)
Some really shocking news on this Wednesday night. Just this hour, finally getting the results from Alaska’s special election to replace the late Republican Congressman Don Young. Don Young represented Alaska in the at large seat for 50 years, since 1972. He’s been a Republican the whole time. The last time the state was represented by a Democrat, I misspoke, was back in 1972. And NBC has projected that the Democrat in that race, a woman named Mary Peltola, has won that election. Just shocking. You see who she won it over, Sarah Palin of course, the erstwhile governor, who was then a VP candidate in 2008 and then resigned the governorship and then had a reality show, and then kind of, I don’t know what happened to her, but wanted to get back in the game.

Speaker 1: (00:41)
So she runs in Alaska, which is a very red state. It’s at large congressional district, has existed for 63 years. And like I said, for 50 years, the seat was held by Young. In fact, the guy before Young, a guy named Nick Begich, it’s his grandson who ran against Sarah Palin as a Republican. The two didn’t like each other very much. And well, this is the result. The election to serve out the remaining few months of Young term was back on August 16th, more than two weeks ago. Democrat Mary Peltola faced off against former Alaska governor. She was, of course, endorsed by Donald Trump. There, you see the other guy, Republican Nick Begich, who made a strong showing.

Speaker 1: (01:17)
There was something of a bitter feud between the two Republicans of the race. In fact, do you know this? Palin’s former in-laws even threw Begich a pre-election night party instead of supporting their ex daughter-in-law. And because Alaska just started using rank choice voting, when voters ranked their preferred candidates in order, if their top choice does not meet a certain threshold, their vote instead goes to their second ranked candidate and so on. You would expect a lot of Begich voters to put Palin number two, but not enough did because there was some bad blood because they didn’t like Sarah Palin. And so because enough Republicans don’t like Sarah Palin, Mary Peltola.

Speaker 1: (01:51)
Huge [inaudible 00:01:52] win for the democratic party. A win that has to buoy the spirits of Democrats everywhere going in the midterms. It’s not quite Scott Brown wins Ted Kennedy’s seat in the reverse, but it’s a little in the ballpark. We’ll see. This comes on the heels of the democratic victory in New York’s 19th last week. Democratic flipped a seat that had been Republican controlled for almost 50 years tonight in a red state special election. Another sign the party’s headwinds are changing heading into November’s elections. Also, Peltola will become the first Alaska native to serve in Congress. She’ll have to run again in November against the same candidates to hold onto the seat. But one of many fascinating races unfolding throughout the country.