Ahead of her astonishing victory this week in a special election to fill Alaska’s sole congressional seat, Mary Peltola was delighted to get recognized at Costco. “I was approached by some people to do a selfie,” she laughed.

It seemed like months of traversing the state for meet-and greets was paying off. “I am getting recognized more.”

Now, people all over the US are learning her name. Peltola, who is Yup’ik Eskimo, will make history as the first Alaska Native to represent the state in Congress, and as the first Democrat to hold the seat in nearly 50 years.

On Wednesday, she prevailed over the Trump-endorsed former vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin and Republican party-backed Nick Begich III – in a state that favoured Trump by 10 points in 2020. She will serve out the remainder of the late Republican congressman Don Young’s term.

A former state legislator and fisheries manager, Peltola campaigned as a relentlessly amicable coalition builder. “I want to work with everyone and anyone who is a reasonable person to find solutions to Alaska’s challenges,” she said.

In a race where Palin’s celebrity – and her self-described “right-winging, bitter-clinging” attack dog energy – loomed large in the media and in voters’ minds, Peltola would often bring up her warm relationship with Palin. She’d talk about how both she and Palin were pregnant at the same time, while Peltola was serving as a legislator and Palin was governor. “Our teenagers are just a month apart,” she said. Before Palin left to campaign as Republican John McCain’s running mate in the 2008 elections, she bequeathed Peltola her backyard trampoline.

Resolute niceness

Peltola was born in 1973, the year that Young was elected to office, and her father was a friend of the late congressman. While Young – a bombastic character with a taxidermy-stuffed office, a reputation for making racist and sexist jokes and a zeal for oil – was very much a contrast to Peltola, in demeanour and philosophy, voters in Anchorage nonetheless said they shared a sense of pragmatic bipartisanship.

In 2010, Peltola helped to run the write-in campaign for Lisa Murkowski, the Republican senator with an independent streak now fighting for her political life after she voted for Trump’s impeachment.

First elected to the state legislature in 1998, Peltola built a reputation for resolute niceness. She helped build the Bush Caucus – a bipartisan group of legislators representing the most rural and remote parts of the state – and showed a knack for winning over even her most conservative colleagues to advance policies on natural resource management and infrastructure.

Peltola’s own politics diverge from the Republicans she is often willing to work with. In the US House race, she was the only candidate who endorsed abortion rights. “Alaska Natives have a history of forced sterilisation against their knowledge or consent,” she said. “People should have to build their families the way, when and how they choose. And for that to be infringed on is very troubling.”

A majority of Alaskans support the right to choose – and after the supreme court decision to revoke the constitutional right to abortion access, the issue has energized voters in the Last Frontier as it has in other parts of the country.

Peltola’s policies on climate adaptation also reflect the nuanced realities of Alaska – a state whose economy is intricately entwined with the oil and gas industry and whose people live at the Arctic edge of the climate crisis. Alaska is losing glacier ice faster than anywhere else in the world. “In the near term, we are tied to oil and gas. And in the near term, that is how we are paying our bills as Alaskans,” Peltola said. But “I have seen firsthand the effects of climate change across Alaska. We had over 250 wildfires this summer before June, we had the largest tundra fire we’ve ever seen in May.” Fisheries and salmon stock, which many Alaskans depend on for sustenance, are suffering, she added.

Her platform focused on investment in renewable energy and a gradual transition for Alaska’s economy.

A focus on bipartisanship could pay off

It remains unclear if Peltola’s moderate way will pave her path to victory in November when she’ll be running again in the race to serve the next full, two-year term in Congress. Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system, which the state tried for the first time with the special election, could be shaped as much by Alaskans’ scepticism about Palin as their support for Peltola.

But in a state that tends to elect a Republican but where the majority of voters declare no party preference, her focus on bipartisanship could pay off.

“We all have to help each other out if we’re going to survive. That’s the fundamental nature of Alaskans,” said Ivan Moore, an Anchorage-based pollster who has been tracking Peltola’s rise in Alaska politics. “We can be political assholes, just like everywhere else. But when push comes to shove, when it’s life and death, Alaskans will help each other. And I think Mary tapped into that.”

“She speaks in a language that connects people,” said Shirley Mae Springer Staten, 76, an Anchorage-based arts educator who supported Peltola. “There’s a new wave of unkindness in politics these days, and I like that Mary Peltola pushes against that.”

News of her victory this week came on Peltola’s 49th birthday – a “GOOD DAY”, she tweeted shortly after the elections division released preliminary results.

Now more people know who she is. But she’s sticking with what works. “Support a regular Alaskan,” is the slogan.