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      Sarah Palin leads in special primary for Alaska’s House seat in comeback bid

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      Sarah Palin leads in special primary for Alaska’s House seat in comeback bidRun by former Republican vice-presidential candidate marks first bid since resigning as governor partway through her term in 2009 Former Alaska governor and Republican ex-vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin leads in early results from Saturday’s special primary for the state’s only US House seat in what could be a remarkable political re-emergence.Voters in the far north-western state are whittling down the list of 48 candidates running for the position that was held for 49 years by the late US Representative Don Young.The early results showed Palin, endorsed by Donald Trump, with 29.8% of the votes counted so far; Republican Nick Begich had 19.3%; independent Al Gross had 12.5%; Democrat Mary Peltola with 7.5%; and Republican Tara Sweeney had 5.3%.A candidate whose name is Santa Claus, a self-described “independent, progressive, democratic socialist”, had 4.5%.In a statement Palin said she was looking forward to “fixing this country by responsibly developing Alaska’s God-given resources” and then expressed rightwing talking points on gun rights, abortion and a desire for a smaller government.The top four vote-getters, regardless of party affiliation, will advance to an August special election in which ranked choice voting will be used. The winner of the special election will serve the remainder of Young’s term, which ends in January. Young died in March at age 88.This election was unlike any the state has seen, crammed with candidates and conducted primarily by mail. This was the first election, too, under a system approved by voters in 2020 that ends party primaries and uses ranked choice voting in general elections.Saturday marked the first ballot count; state elections officials plan additional counts on Wednesday and Friday, and a final count on 21 June. They have targeted 25 June to certify the race.Palin, the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee, released a statement expressing gratitude “to all of my wonderful supporters who voted to make Alaska great again!”The sheer number of candidates left some voters overwhelmed, and many of the candidates themselves faced challenges in setting up a campaign on the fly and trying to leave an impression on voters in a short period of time. The candidate filing deadline was April 1.Palin’s run marks her first bid for elected office since resigning as governor partway through her term in 2009. She was endorsed in this campaign by some national political figures who participated in a “telerally” for her and said Palin would “fight harder than anybody I can think of”, particularly on energy issues.Palin sought to assure voters that she is serious about her bid and committed to Alaska.During the campaign, opponents poked at that. Gross, an orthopedic surgeon who made an unsuccessful run for US Senate in 2020, said Palin “quit on Alaska”. Begich and Sweeney made points of saying they are not quitters.The Associated Press contributed to this reportTopicsSarah PalinHouse of RepresentativesAlaskaUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      What Trump Doesn’t Understand About Alaska

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      SITKA, Alaska — As the only Republican senator fighting for her seat less than two years after voting to convict Donald Trump, Lisa Murkowski could be one of the crowning casualties in his war to rid the party of dissenters. Mr. Trump has insisted that voters here in Alaska won’t forgive Ms. Murkowski for her recent transgressions, and that Kelly Tshibaka, the Republican challenger whom he endorsed, “stands for Alaska values.”What I imagine he meant was that Ms. Tshibaka has the courage to confront bullies, the willingness to put state before political party, and a general resilience that comes from years of living in “Alyeska,” the Aleut word for “the great land.” The only problem with his argument is that, over the past 20 years, it’s Ms. Murkowski who has demonstrated all three. And it might be just enough to save her political career.As the state with the highest percentage of voters refusing to declare a party affiliation (more than half of voters here identify as independent), Alaska has a rich tradition of rewarding candidates who stand up to powerful figures like Mr. Trump. In the early 20th century, James Wickersham, Alaska’s congressional delegate, battled to give the territory the right to govern itself, insisting on its difference from the “Outside.” As recently as the 1990s, Gov. Wally Hickel was saying that Alaska deserved to be called its own “unique country.” And Alaska’s longtime congressman, Don Young, was so willing to stand up to the powers that be that he once held a 10-inch knife to John Boehner’s neck. (The two later became friends, and Mr. Boehner served as Mr. Young’s best man.)The daughter of an Alaska governor, Ms. Murkowski understands this tradition better than most. She infuriated her Republican colleagues in 2017 with her vote against repealing the Affordable Care Act and rejected Mr. Trump’s nominees, voting against both Betsy DeVos as secretary of education and Brett Kavanaugh for Supreme Court justice. In that sense, she represents ideals all but lost in American political life: She may not wield a knife on the House floor, but her independent thinking and ability to consider each issue individually are relics of a time when party loyalty mattered less than your relationship with your constituents.That approach has hurt her standing in the Republican Party. After she voted to convict Mr. Trump, he declared that she represented “her state badly and her country even worse.” He even threatened to come to Alaska to campaign against her — now that would be a reality show I’d watch. While such saber-rattling would have been enough to send most moderate Republicans scurrying into their holes, Ms. Murkowski held fast.To understand her resilience and resolve, you need only to look at her wrist. There, you’ll find a bracelet engraved with her last name, along with the words “Fill it in. Write it in.” This was a gift from her husband, who modeled it on the silicone wristbands her campaign issued in 2010 after she lost her primary to a Republican challenger blessed by the national party. Ms. Murkowski won the general election as a write-in candidate thanks to a motley crew of centrists, Democrats and Alaska’s Native community. (Ms. Murkowski’s vote against the health care repeal was largely seen in the state as a “thank you” card to the villages that allowed her to pull this off.)Kelly Tshibaka, meanwhile, returned to the state of her birth just three years ago — about as long as we keep salmon in the freezer before putting it into our Dungeness traps. In an attempt to shake the carpetbagger label, her campaign released a video showing her at work on a set-net operation in Cook Inlet. The move backfired when the Alaska Department of Fish and Game fined her $270 for not having a crew license. (I was also fined by that agency, for working on a sea cucumber dive boat without a license. I did not issue a news release afterward blaming my political opponents for the fine.)If the tribes, sportfishermen, A.T.V.ers, commercial fishermen and conservationists in Alaska agree on one thing, it’s the responsibility of the state to control its fisheries and maintain a “sustainable yield” through strict regulations, a duty written into the Alaska Constitution. The footage of Ms. Tshibaka illegally handling a salmon showed someone desperate for authenticity — but also a candidate either ignorant of, or just willing to break, Alaska’s fish laws.Ms. Tshibaka has also been taken to task for her unsteady relationship to the truth. In 1975, her parents moved to the state for the pipeline boom and spent time in a tent at Russian Jack Springs Park for their honeymoon. A photo from this period has become Exhibit A of the “homeless to Harvard” story arc Ms. Tshibaka has promoted to describe her Alaska upbringing. As the veteran Alaska newspaper columnist Dermot Cole recently pointed out, her parents weren’t homeless. They were camping.After finishing high school, Ms. Tshibaka left to attend college in Texas, then Harvard Law, before spending 17 years in Washington. She wrote an article praising an organization that advocated gay conversion therapy (she later apologized to anyone she might have offended), described the “Twilight” books and movies as “evil,” and warned against the “addictive” qualities of witchcraft — positions not exactly in line with Alaska voters’ distaste for people telling them how to live their lives.Both she and Ms. Murkowski have presented themselves as lifelong Alaskans running against the political “establishment” in the rest of the country. But it’s Ms. Tshibaka who salutes the flag at Mar-a-Lago, telling high school students in Nome that Mr. Trump’s policies were “super great for our state.” In February, Mr. Trump hosted a fund-raiser for Ms. Tshibaka at his Florida club, though he then turned around and charged her $14,477 for use of the facilities. She moved back to Alaska only in 2019, when she was hired by the Republican governor, with the state paying $81,000 in moving expenses to bring her and her family north.Preening for a national audience at CPAC and on conservative talk shows, as Ms. Tshibaka has been doing, could hurt her chances in the August primary. The Democrat who went up against the Republican incumbent senator Dan Sullivan in 2020, Dr. Al Gross, discovered this to his grief. Hosting Zoom calls from his Airstream, courting donors across the country, he raised $19 million, the highest take of any Alaska Senate candidate ever. But come election time, the national exposure seemed to hinder more than help; Dr. Gross lost to Mr. Sullivan by 13 percentage points.Ms. Murkowski plays a different game.If history is any guide, soon she’ll arrive at the small airport here in Sitka dressed in fleece and denim, ready to wolf down wilted iceberg lettuce at the Chamber of Commerce luncheon, pumping hands with the “cut, kill, dig, drill” flannel-wearing good old boys at Orion Sporting Goods, dancing at Native celebrations.While I don’t always agree with her, when I watch her work a room, it’s difficult to take seriously Mr. Trump’s prediction that Alaska voters won’t forgive her. The more relevant question seems to be whether Ms. Murkowski will forgive him. “I will tell you, if the Republican Party has become nothing more than the party of Trump, I sincerely question whether this is the party for me,” she said shortly after the Capitol riot.The idea that Mr. Trump could fly up to Alaska and take her down, as he has so many others, could actually win Ms. Murkowski votes. One thing he might discover in the attempt: He doesn’t have the first idea of the values of this state he has visited only during refueling stops on Air Force One — the closeness to the land, to blood, to the sound ice shards make on a pane of glass at 40 below. All this might play as curiosity or nostalgia in the Lower 48. But it’s real up here.We don’t need more greatness in Alaska — just someone who understands what we already have, and is courageous enough to defend it against those who do not.Brendan Jones (@BrendanIJones), a writer and commercial fisherman, is the author, most recently, of the novel “Whispering Alaska.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      In Alaska, the Race to Succeed Don Young Is Raucous and Crowded

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      ANCHORAGE — The race began, fittingly, in the spring season known here as breakup.As sheets of ice cracked into pieces across the rivers, melting snow exposed the gravel and dust on roads, and preparations began for hunting and fishing, dozens of congressional campaigns were springing to life with barely a few days of planning. Candidates held solemn conversations with their families, advisers hastily secured website domains and the endorsements and donations began flooding in.The unexpected death in March of Representative Don Young, the Republican who represented Alaska’s sole congressional district for nearly half a century, has given rise to a crowded and raucous race to succeed him. No fewer than four dozen Alaskans — political veterans, gadflies, and even a man legally named Santa Claus — are running to succeed Mr. Young as the lone representative in the House for the state’s 734,000 people.The list of candidates is sprawling. It includes former Gov. Sarah Palin, who is endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump; Nick Begich III, whose grandfather held the seat before Mr. Young; four Alaska Natives, including one, Tara Sweeney, who served in the Trump administration; Jeff Lowenfels, a retired lawyer and a prolific local gardening columnist; and Mr. Claus, a portly, bearded North Pole councilman and socialist.“That’s a lot of people to do research on and figure out,” said Morgan Johnson, 25, as her black cat, Edgar, prowled across the counter of her plant shop in Juneau. “I get stuck on one person’s Instagram for an hour — now I have to do that for 48 people.”Morgan Johnson, of Juneau, is just one voter doing research before choosing which primary candidate will get her vote.Ash Adams for The New York TimesFurther complicating the picture, four separate elections in five months will determine Mr. Young’s successor. First, the throng of candidates will compete in a primary contest on June 11. The top four finishers will then advance in August to a special election to complete the remainder of Mr. Young’s term. That same August day, the candidates who choose to do so will compete in yet another primary to determine which four advance to the general election. And finally in November, voters will choose a winner to be sworn in in January 2023.The sheer volume of candidates owes in part to a new electoral system in Alaska, which opens primaries to all comers, regardless of political affiliation. Under the rules, voters can choose one candidate, and the four who draw the most votes then compete in a runoff of sorts, in which voters then rank their choices. The preferences are counted until someone secures a majority.State officials and advocacy groups are rushing to pull off the rapid-fire contests and ensure that voters understand how the new rules work.“We’re compressing everything that usually is done in about seven months in 90 days,” said Gail Fenumiai, Alaska’s director of elections, who said her team would mail and process more than 586,000 ballots. “There’s a significant amount of work involved.”State officials decided to hold the special election by mail, in part because there was not enough time for the necessary hiring and training of more than 2,000 new election workers, as well as testing and sending election equipment across the state. A ballot was carefully designed to fit all the names on one side of paper, with the first ones sent out less than six weeks after Mr. Young died.Understand the 2022 Midterm Elections So FarAfter key races in Georgia, Pennsylvania and other states, here’s what we’ve learned.Trump’s Invincibility in Doubt: With many of Donald J. Trump’s endorsed candidates failing to win, some Republicans see an opening for a post-Trump candidate in 2024.G.O.P. Governors Emboldened: Many Republican governors are in strong political shape. And some are openly opposing Mr. Trump.Voter Fraud Claims Fade: Republicans have been accepting their primary victories with little concern about the voter fraud they once falsely claimed caused Mr. Trump’s 2020 loss.The Politics of Guns: Republicans have been far more likely than Democrats to use messaging about guns to galvanize their base in the midterms. Here’s why.Candidates have also had little time to build a campaign that stands out or crisscross a mountainous state where villages and towns are often accessible only by plane or ferry.“When you’re vying for a limited set of first-round votes, you have to figure out how to put yourself forward in a way that people will hear it and resonate with it,” said Christopher Constant, an Anchorage assemblyman and Democrat who announced his intent to challenge Mr. Young in February.The broad field has roiled the close-knit political circles here, pitting longtime colleagues and friends against one another.“This seat has been held for 49 years by one guy, and people are just hungry to have a different voice in Congress, and they think that they can add to it,” said John Coghill, a former state senator who is among the candidates.Christopher Constant, a Democrat, announced his plan to challenge Mr. Young in February.Ash Adams for The New York TimesMary Peltola, a Democrat, is an enrolled member of the Yupik tribe.Ash Adams for The New York TimesIt has also cracked the door open for a series of history-making bids, including four candidates who would be the first Alaska Native to represent a state where more than 15 percent of the population identifies as Indigenous.“It is long past time that an Indigenous person was sent to D.C. to work on behalf of Alaska,” Mary Peltola, a Democrat who spent a decade in the state Legislature and is Yup’ik, said in an interview in Anchorage. Ms. Peltola is among the candidates who have gone to great lengths to highlight a personal connection or appreciation for Mr. Young.The fiercest competition is inside the Republican Party, where younger conservatives who had waited their entire lives in Mr. Young’s shadow are contending for the mantle of his successor. The filing deadline was on April 1, two weeks after Mr. Young died, meaning that candidates had to decide whether to run before funeral services for the congressman had concluded.“It stunned the entire state, and then having to figure out what this new reality was going to look like and what processes were in front of Alaskans with respect to this vacancy — it’s been exhausting,” said Ms. Sweeney, a co-chair of Mr. Young’s campaign and now a candidate for his seat.Tara Sweeney, a Republican, has campaigned on her personal connection to Mr. Young and her experience in Washington.Mark Thiessen/Associated PressMs. Sweeney, who is Inupiaq and the first Alaska Native woman to serve as assistant secretary for Indian Affairs, has emerged as a leading contender for Republicans, with top Alaska Native-owned corporations banding together to back her campaign. Mr. Begich, a conservative whose grandfather of the same name held the seat as a Democrat until his disappearance in a plane crash in 1972, angered many in Mr. Young’s inner circle by jumping into the race in October as a challenger, dangling what they saw as insinuations that the congressman was too old.The chosen candidate of the state Republican Party, Mr. Begich has disavowed the $1 trillion infrastructure bill Mr. Young proudly championed and the congressman’s penchant for earmarking federal dollars for Alaska.“For too long, the formula in Alaska has been to sacrifice the good of the nation for the good of the state, and I don’t think that that’s a formula that we need to be practicing going forward,” Mr. Begich said in an interview. Mr. Young’s allies have gravitated toward less conservative candidates.Those include Ms. Sweeney and Josh Revak, a state senator and an Iraq war veteran who secured a coveted endorsement from Mr. Young’s widow, Anne. Nick Begich’s grandfather held the sole Alaska congressional seat before Mr. Young.Ash Adams for The New York TimesMr. Revak secured a coveted endorsement from Mr. Young’s widow, Anne.Ash Adams for The New York Times“It was a really difficult choice, but if he believed in me and others believe in me, that I have the heart and the work ethic and the experience to do the job, then I’ll walk through fire to do it,” Mr. Revak, wearing an ivory bolo tie with the Alaska Senate seal and his Purple Heart pin, said after a recent fund-raiser at an Anchorage home.Ms. Palin’s late entry into the race — and Mr. Trump’s near-immediate endorsement of her — has further scrambled the political picture. As a former governor and vice-presidential candidate, Ms. Palin, whose campaign did not respond to requests for an interview, easily has the strongest name recognition in the field of candidates.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      Your Thursday Evening Briefing

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      Here’s what you need to know at the end of the day.(Want to get this newsletter in your inbox? Here’s the sign-up.)Good evening. Here’s the latest at the end of Thursday.Mifepristone, the first of two drugs typically taken for a medication abortion, is authorized for patients up to 10 weeks pregnant.Michelle Mishina-Kunz for The New York Times1. Senate Democrats planned a surely doomed vote on Roe. The Senate’s majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said he will introduce a bill next week that codifies abortion rights into federal law, following the leaked Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. The bill will almost certainly fall short of the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster or even obtain a simple majority.Still, Schumer called the vote one of “the most important we ever take,” framing it as a reminder to voters of the party’s stance. A majority of Americans support some form of abortion. If the Court overturns Roe, medication abortions, which account for more than half of recent abortions, will be the next battleground. A senior official said that the Biden administration is looking for further steps to increase access to all types of abortion, including the pill method.In other fallout, a stark divide has grown between Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel Alito Jr., author of the leaked decision. A Russian tank stuck in mud outside the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times2. The U.S. shared intelligence that helped Ukraine kill Russian generals. About 12 have died, according to Ukrainian officials, an astonishingly high number.The Biden administration’s help is part of a classified effort to give Ukraine real-time battlefield intelligence. Officials wouldn’t specify how many of the generals were killed with U.S. assistance and denied that the intelligence is provided with the intent to kill Russian generals.“Heavy, bloody battles” were fought at the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, the city’s last pocket of resistance, after Russian forces breached the perimeter. Seizing Mariupol would let President Vladimir Putin claim a major victory before Moscow’s Victory Day celebration on May 9.Fighting raged across the eastern front, from Mariupol to the northern Donetsk area. “The front is swinging this way and that,” a Ukrainian medic told The Times.The W.H.O. estimated roughly 930,000 more people than normal died in the U.S. by the end of 2021.Kirsten Luce for The New York Times3. Nearly 15 million more people died during the first two years of the pandemic than would have been expected during normal times.That estimate, which came from a panel of experts the World Health Organization assembled, offered a startling glimpse of how drastically the death counts reported by many governments have understated the pandemic’s toll.Most of the deaths were from Covid, the experts said, but some people died because the pandemic made it more difficult to get medical care for ailments such as heart attacks. The previous toll, based solely on death counts reported by countries, was six million.In other virus news, BA.2.12.1, a subvariant of the BA.2 Omicron subvariant, is likely to soon become the dominant form of the virus in the U.S. There’s no indication yet that it causes more severe disease.A Modoc National Forest firefighter used a drip torch to ignite a prescribed burn in Alturas, Calif., last year.Max Whittaker for The New York Times4. Fire season has arrived earlier than ever.Enormous wildfires have already consumed landscapes in Arizona and Nebraska. More than a dozen wildfires are raging this month across the Southwest. Summer is still more than a month and a half away.A time-lapse image from space shows the scope of the Western catastrophe: Smoke from fires in New Mexico can be seen on a collision course with a huge dust storm in Colorado. Both are examples of natural disasters made more severe and frequent by climate change, which has also made a vital tool for controlling wildfires — intentional burns — much riskier.The country’s largest active blaze, a megafire of more than 160,000 acres in northern New Mexico, has grown with such ferocity that it has threatened a multigenerational culture that has endured for centuries.A polling station in Shipley, England, where local elections could decide Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s fate.Mary Turner for The New York Times5. Britain is holding local elections in a big test for Prime Minister Boris Johnson.His scandal-prone leadership is again on the line, with Conservatives trailing the Labour Party in polls and his own lawmakers mulling a no-confidence motion that could evict him from Downing Street. A poor election result could tip them over the edge.One thing that has saved Johnson so far is his reputation as an election winner and his strength in the so-called red wall regions of the north and middle of England, which have traditionally voted Labour. Many voters are skeptical that the opposition can solve issues such as soaring prices.Elon Musk’s recent purchase of Twitter has left users and investors unsure of how the site will change. Joshua Lott/Getty Images6. Elon Musk has brought in 18 new investors and $7 billion for his Twitter deal.Among them are Larry Ellison, who put in $1 billion; Fidelity; and the venture capital firm Sequoia Capital. Musk is paying $21 billion from his own very deep pocket, and an investment firm analyst called Musk’s move a smart deal. In 2019, Musk tweeted “I hate advertising,” — but ads account for about 90 percent of Twitter revenue. Some agencies already say Twitter ads aren’t targeted well. Now, numerous advertising executives say they’re willing to move their money elsewhere, especially if he removes the safeguards that allowed Twitter to remove racist rants and conspiracy theories. Musk has mentioned potentially charging some users.Two of our colleagues, John Eligon and Lynsey Chutel, interviewed friends and relatives — including Musk’s estranged father — in South Africa, where he grew up, to better understand the mysterious entrepreneur.Russia-Ukraine War: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 4In Mariupol. More

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      Sarah Palin faces formidable opponent in Congress run: Santa Claus

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      Sarah Palin faces formidable opponent in Congress run: Santa ClausThe bearded city council member in North Pole, Alaska, backs Bernie and champions child welfare. Could his new workshop be in Washington? Sarah Palin announced her candidacy for Alaska’s only congressional seat this month, entering a race with dozens of candidates. She certainly brings name recognition to the contest – but another contender may have her beat in that department.His name is Santa Claus.Sarah Palin announces run for US Congress in AlaskaRead moreHe lives, of course, in North Pole – a town of about 2,000 in Alaska. He has a big white beard and a kindly manner, and Santa Claus is indeed his legal name, though, as a Bernie Sanders supporter, he does not exploit elf labor. He won a city council seat in 2015, to the delight of observers around the world. Now he’s ready to take his political career to the next stage.He’s running to complete the term of the long-serving Republican congressman Don Young, who died last month at age 88. A special primary will be held on 11 June.As for Claus’s politics: he’s been called “a bastion of blue on a city council as red as Rudolph’s nose”. He says voters who look at Sanders’ policy platform can get a pretty good idea of his own, including support for Medicare for All, racial justice, corporate accountability, and free and fair elections. That includes ranked-choice voting, which will feature in the second round of the coming election. “That’s what’s given me the opportunity here,” he said. Ranked-choice voting “gives people with name recognition such as yours truly, and even Sarah, for that matter, a slight advantage”.But Claus hasn’t always had that name. “Seventy-four years ago, I didn’t pop out with a beard,” he says. In fact, Claus changed his name from Tom O’Connor in 2005. He was living in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, at the time, and pondering what he should do with his life, as Julia O’Malley wrote in a 2015 Guardian profile. He had previously worked in law enforcement, where he’d witnessed kids falling “through the cracks” of the foster care system, and he wanted to do what he could to help them, he told the Anchorage Daily News in 2020. He’d already grown the beard, and as he prayed for guidance, someone in a car nearby shouted, “Santa, I love you!”“That’s about as fast an answer to your prayer as I’d probably ever get,” Claus tells the Guardian. “So next day, I called up the county clerk to change my name legally.” It caused a few headaches, including some brief suspicion at airport security, where he got “the once-over”. “Somebody about a month later sent out an email, I guess, letting people know, yeah, there’s this guy Santa who’s gonna be flying around. Not necessarily in my sleigh, but using regular transportation.”Despite his name, greeting children at Christmastime isn’t his thing. “I’m not really interested in that,” he says. “There are plenty of my beloved helpers throughout the world who sort of stand in for me with their in-person visits.” Instead, he says, “I tend to interact more with adults with respect to legislation.”To that end, shortly after changing his name, he embarked on a tour of every state, meeting with governors, their staffers and legislators to advocate for child welfare, as he told the Daily News. It was on this tour that he met his future rival for the congressional seat – and despite the political gulf between them, she made a good impression.“Sarah Palin was one of the governors I visited,” he says. “We met very briefly, but she had set up a meeting with six of her different department heads, which was quite unusual for a governor to do. So I was appreciative,” he says, saying Palin was “very nice, very helpful to me”.As for their disagreements, Claus, who has not declared a party affiliation, is diplomatic. “Now that she’s been endorsed by Trump,” he says, chuckling, “let me put it this way: being a Bernie supporter, we have disparate views on a variety of subjects.”He continues: “I don’t plan to get pushed around by her or by Trump. So it may have some interesting moments during the race,” for which he says he is not soliciting or accepting donations. “As a candidate, as a legislator, I tend to look for common ground. There are people I disagree with and people who disagree with me. But there’s always common ground and one’s willing to make the effort to find it and then legislate for greater good.”The congressional election will determine who completes Don Young’s term, ending in January. If Santa Claus wins, he doesn’t plan to run for re-election.“I think there should be people a decade two or three younger than I am stepping up and doing their best to help their communities and their states. For some positive change, I’d like to do my little part.“Plus I think it’d be kind of fun. Alaska is known for kind of having characters up here. I would certainly be well within that tradition.”TopicsAlaskaSarah PalinUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Will Alaskans Welcome Sarah Palin’s Political Comeback?

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      Charles Homans, a New York Times reporter who lived in Alaska during Palin’s ascent, reflects on the state’s astonishing political transformation.Greetings from your host Blake Hounshell. Leah Askarinam is off today. We’re joined tonight by our colleague Charles Homans, who writes about Sarah Palin and Alaska’s changing politics.A decade ago, I caught a ride in a pickup truck on the outskirts of Nome, Alaska, with Bob Hafner, a burly, tattooed gold dredger.I was working on an article about the boom in reality TV shows celebrating rugged blue-collar jobs, which seemed to be in production in every corner of America’s most rugged state. As Hafner’s truck bounced along the rutted coast road, I asked what he made of it.He laughed, a little ruefully. “I’m probably partly responsible for it,” he said. “Me and my diving partner, we did that Sarah Palin show.”“Sarah Palin’s Alaska,” produced by Mark Burnett, had recently run for nine episodes on TLC. Palin was filmed communing with enough commercial fishermen, loggers and bush pilots that the odds of randomly encountering one of them on the road in Nome were probably pretty good.Later I watched the Nome episode, and sure enough: There was Hafner standing alongside Palin as she admired a gold nugget the size of a fingernail that he and Palin’s brother, Chuck, had sucked up from the seafloor. “That’s neat!” the former governor said.There was a note of desperation in this strenuous on-screen Alaska-ing, and in Palin’s voice-over declaration during the opening montage that “I love this state like I love my family.”Four years after the 2008 presidential election and three years after her resignation as governor, the waterfront tourist shops in Valdez hawked “Bailin’ Palin” T-shirts. Only 36 percent of Alaskans viewed her positively, and 61 percent viewed her negatively.Ivan Moore, a pollster in Anchorage, recalls that when he asked people who viewed her negatively why they felt that way, “the most common response, streaks ahead of the rest, was: ‘She quit. She’s a quitter.’”Return from the wildernessThe governor’s relationship with her state changed forever with her resignation, which seemed to represent the exchange of Sarah Palin’s Alaska for “Sarah Palin’s Alaska”: a place for a personal brand.Aside from backing an ultimately unsuccessful challenger to Senator Lisa Murkowski in 2010 (and the same candidate four years later, in the race for the state’s other Senate seat), she was mostly a nonparticipant in Alaska’s affairs. Her political ambitions seemed entirely national, though even these appeared to flag quickly.Her 2012 presidential campaign ended before it began. Her political action committee still took in millions of dollars, but spent a tiny fraction of the money on candidates or independent expenditures. Her most prominent return to the arena, in 2016, was a stemwinder in service of a politician who would all but supplant her role within the Republican Party. In recent years, she had been in the news most often on account of her libel lawsuit against The New York Times. A jury rejected her claims in February.So it was a surprise when Palin emerged from a decade in the cable-talking-head wilderness to hint at and, on April 1, announce her candidacy for Alaska’s lone House seat, which had opened up with Don Young’s death in March.It was more surprising still to see Palin give a lengthy interview to Nathaniel Herz of The Anchorage Daily News, in which she excoriated the “establishment machine” that would oppose her.“They have a loud voice,” she told Herz. “They hold purse strings. They have the media’s ear. But they do not necessarily reflect the will of the people.”An Arctic political machineRepublican candidates today frequently denounce a greatly weakened party “establishment,” but the line is more jarring coming from Palin, who in 2006 did fight and beat one of the country’s most entrenched and clubby state-level Republican establishments.It is a story that has long since grown threadbare from Palin’s own retelling, but if you lived in Alaska, as I did, at the time of Palin’s primary election victory over the incumbent and Alaskan institution Frank Murkowski, it was a genuinely astonishing moment of political transformation.Alaska in 2006 still possessed something resembling a political machine, which cannily husbanded the state’s all-important relationships with the oil and gas industry and the federal government.Alaskans did not always love the stalwarts of this mostly Republican machine, but they understood that deposing them would potentially cost the state a great deal, so they kept electing them. Probably only someone like Palin, with her messianic conviction, had a shot at toppling it.The F.B.I. helped, too, of course, mounting a yearslong investigation of more than half a dozen lawmakers suspected of having taken bribes from the VECO Corporation, an oil-field contractor, that happened to come to a head shortly after Palin’s primary triumph.Today, Alaskan Republican politics don’t much resemble the hierarchy that Palin tilted against 16 years ago. They look, for better or worse, a lot more like Republican politics everywhere else.Sarah Palin in New York this winter.Jefferson Siegel for The New York TimesA 48-candidate ballotMany influential G.O.P. figures in Alaska remain cool to Palin, but over more prosaic matters, like her relative lack of involvement locally over her years as a national celebrity.“Most serious Republican figures in Alaska, their question is, ‘Where have you been?’” said Suzanne Downing, a former speechwriter for Palin’s lieutenant and successor as governor, Sean Parnell. Downing, who now edits the right-leaning Must Read Alaska blog, added, “She hasn’t lifted a finger for Alaska since she left office.”Palin’s campaign did not respond to emails and phone calls requesting comment. In an interview with The Associated Press this week, Palin objected to the suggestion that she had left the state behind.“I’m sorry if that narrative is out there, because it’s inaccurate,” she told The A.P., offering by way of bona fides the fact that she had recently been “shoveling moose poop” in her father’s yard.Early this month, Downing commissioned a poll of the comically large field for the June primary — the ballot for which, with its 48 candidates, looks like a page from a phone book. She concedes to having been shocked when Palin came out in the lead at 31 percent: five percentage points ahead of her nearest rival, Al Gross, an independent who has in past races been endorsed by the state Democratic Party.And yet when the pollster asked about respondents’ favorable or unfavorable views of Palin, the numbers — 37 percent to 51 percent — were not much changed from when Ivan Moore asked the same question a decade ago. In fact, Moore told me that Palin’s numbers had not moved appreciably in intermittent polls over the intervening years.This is unusual: For ordinary politicians, favorability and unfavorability tend to soften as time passes and headlines fade. It’s possible — Moore thinks this — that the longer half-life of Palin’s numbers reflects the depth of the betrayal Alaskans still feel about her resignation.But her most recent national polling — admittedly nine years old — shows an almost identical breakdown of favorable and unfavorable responses. Which raises another possibility: that Palin’s political celebrity is so all-devouring and all-polarizing that even Alaskans, with their very particular history with Palin, can’t see past it.Can a much-changed state still surprise?Downing brought up another possible explanation. Alaska, she reminded me, is extraordinarily transient: 12.8 percent of the population turns over in an average year, more than in any other state. Many of the Alaskans taking the measure of Palin today were not Alaskans when she was in office.They are, in other words, less familiar with Sarah Palin’s Alaska than with “Sarah Palin’s Alaska.” One was a place of heady transformation. The other was a veneer of local particularity, stretched over the same national politics that seemed to offer few potential surprises, only deepening entrenchment.“I don’t know,” Downing said, “if she can get a single voter that she doesn’t already own.”What to readThe Florida Senate passed a congressional map proposed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, which would give Republicans an even greater advantage in the state.Herschel Walker, a Republican contender for Senate in Georgia, is a risky candidate for the G.O.P. to run, but he has nevertheless surged to the top of the field, our colleague Maya King reports.Barack Obama, who has waded more and more into the public fray over misinformation and disinformation, is expected to give a speech on the subject at Stanford University on Thursday.briefing bookDisney World’s Main Street, U.S.A., under construction in 1970.Associated PressHow Disney got its own state-within-a-stateWhen Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida urged lawmakers this week to consider ending Disney’s special administrative status, he wasn’t just escalating his cultural standoff with his state’s largest employer.He was also pulling on a string that threatened to unravel an arrangement the state made with Disney in 1967 that granted the company extraordinary power over a 39-square-mile patch of former swampland in Central Florida — an unusual experiment in local governance that has few American counterparts.Disney runs everything from the fire department and emergency services to electricity, gas, water and wastewater, subject to the supervision of a five-member board dominated by the company. It decides what is built, and how, and has the power to raise bonds and assess taxes. The charter for the special municipality, the Reedy Creek Improvement District, even allows Disney to build and operate an airport or a power plant using “nuclear fission” if it so chooses.“It’s almost like a sovereign state inside another state,” said Aaron Goldberg, the author of a book on the origins of Disney World, the company’s Florida resort. Others have called it a “Vatican with mouse ears.”At the time of the district’s creation, the brothers Walt and Roy Disney were searching for the ideal site for the successor resort to Disneyland, their California theme park. It had to be somewhere warm and near major highways — but not too near the ocean, because the company didn’t want to compete with the beach. With the help of Paul Helliwell, a lawyer and longtime intelligence operative, they secretly acquired portions of Orange and Osceola Counties. Announcing the project, Disney spoke of his ambition to build a “city of tomorrow.”To fulfill that vision, Disney demanded sovereignty over its own land and, to make a long story short, Florida said yes.Disney’s futuristic city never happened. Portions became Epcot Center, and the special district has under 50 residents. And over half a century later, DeSantis is re-evaluating the state’s bargain as he contemplates some grand ambitions of his own.“Disney has gotten away with special deals from the state of Florida for way too long,” the governor said in an email to his supporters on Wednesday. “It took a look under the hood to see what Disney has become to truly understand their inappropriate influence.”But taking apart Disney’s magical Florida kingdom might prove complicated. For one thing, The Miami Herald noted on Wednesday that residents of Orange and Osceola Counties might be on the hook for a hefty tax bill should DeSantis get what he wants.As Goldberg put it, “How do you dissolve a government that’s been there for 50 years?”— BlakeIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Sarah Palin Knows How to Get Attention. Can She Actually Win?

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      Endorsed by Donald Trump for Alaska’s lone House seat, the former vice-presidential candidate hopes she can mount a political comeback. But she’s not the phenomenon she once was.The last time Sarah Palin and Donald Trump shared a stage together, the former Alaska governor gave a meandering endorsement speech that displayed her inventiveness with the English language — and her instinctive connection to the Republican base.She spoke of “right wingin’, bitter clingin’, proud clingers of our guns, our God, and our religions and our Constitution” and railed against “squirmishes” abroad. It was 20 minutes of vintage Palinisms: “He’s going rogue left and right” — “No more pussy footin’ around!” — “Doggone right we’re angry!” — “us Joe six-packs.” BuzzFeed published the transcript in full, calling it “bizarre.”Beneath the malapropisms and the circumlocutions, though, Palin turned out to have a shrewder feel for Republican voters than those in the press who scorned her, and who underestimated him.Palin’s endorsement of Trump in January 2016 gave him credibility on the populist right at a crucial moment, though it didn’t put him over the top in Iowa, where Senator Ted Cruz of Texas won the caucuses that year. The move even briefly fueled speculation that the two might form a ticket — him the brash, unpredictable New York billionaire; her the snowmobile-drivin’, moose-huntin’ Mama Grizzly from Wasilla. Tabloid dynamite!Trump has now returned the favor, offering Palin his “Complete and Total Endorsement” in her race to succeed Representative Don Young, Alaska’s lone House member, who died on March 18.But six years after they shared that stage in Iowa, both Trump and Palin are somewhat diminished figures. He, of course, is a twice-impeached former president. And though he remains the Republican Party’s most powerful person, his endorsements don’t carry the punch they once did.Palin, meanwhile, has been left to lament, during her libel trial against The New York Times, how she lost her TV gigs and her national political platform. In October, the last time anyone tried to gauge her popularity in Alaska, Palin’s approval rating was just 31 percent, according to the Alaska pollster Ivan Moore.How Donald J. Trump Still LoomsGrip on G.O.P.: Mr. Trump remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party. However, there are signs his control is loosening.Power Struggle: Led by Senator Mitch McConnell, a band of anti-Trump Republicans is maneuvering to thwart the ex-president.Midterms Effect: Mr. Trump has become a party kingmaker, but his involvement in state races worries many Republicans.Post-Presidency Profits: Mr. Trump is melding business with politics, capitalizing for personal gain.Just the Beginning: For many Trump supporters who marched on Jan. 6, the day was not a disgraced insurrection but the start of a movement.So the question must be asked: Can Donald Trump help Sarah Palin win?“I think she’s the favorite right now,” said Kristopher Knauss, a political consultant in Alaska. But that does not mean Palin is a lock.What’s going for herPalin enters the race with some significant advantages.She’ll have near-universal name recognition. She should be able to raise significant sums of money from small donors — a must, given how soon the June 11 primary will be held. She was a popular governor, though by the end of her tenure, her approval rating had slunk from the low 90s to the mid-50s. And the national interest in the race will lead to free media coverage that her opponents can’t match.Palin and Trump share much in common. She ran for governor in 2006 as an outsider taking on a corrupt political establishment. In 2008, as the vice-presidential running mate for Senator John McCain of Arizona, she pioneered the raucous style of political rallies that Trump would turn into the defining feature of his 2016 run. Many of his campaign themes were first hers: battling the media, railing at cultural elites, trashing Washington insiders.Like Trump, Palin parlayed her celebrity into a reality TV show — “Sarah Palin’s Alaska,” which was produced by Mark Burnett, the mastermind of “The Apprentice.” The show got decent ratings, but was canceled after just one season.The two saw each other as kindred spirits, their allies say. In 2011, when Palin was flirting with a presidential run, she visited New York and sat down with Trump and his wife for pizza at Famous Famiglia. (They shared “a pepperoni pizza, a sausage pizza and a meatball pizza,” according to an account at the time by our colleague Trip Gabriel.)Today, Palin is being represented by Michael Glassner, who was the chief operating officer of Trump’s 2020 campaign. The two go way back: Glassner worked with Palin on the McCain campaign, then was the chief of staff of Palin’s political action committee before Trump hired him as his national political director.But that was all long ago, and Palin is no longer a novelty — she’s a 58-year-old former governor who hasn’t held office in more than a decade, and whose star has faded considerably.Trump has backed Palin in her race to succeed Representative Don Young, Alaska’s lone House member, who died on March 18.Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesWhat’s going against herPalin’s strong name recognition is unlikely to be decisive, said Mike Murphy, a former McCain adviser. Noting her high negative ratings, he said “Palin fatigue” could doom her chances among voters who revered Young and take his replacement seriously.“Crazy times deserve crazy politicians, so it’s not impossible that she wins,” Murphy said. “Though I would bet against it.”Palin will be competing in a huge field — 51 candidates, including Santa Claus.That’s partly by design. The voting system Alaska adopted in 2020 was meant to encourage a wide range of candidates to compete. Rather than begin with separate primary elections held by the major political parties, the race will start with one primary that is open to everyone who qualifies. The top four candidates then advance to a general election in which voters rank their favorites.The system was intended to discourage negative campaigning. Because voters’ second choices are factored into the results, candidates must be careful not to alienate voters who support their rivals. In the New York mayor’s race, this led some candidates to form alliances and campaign together. Does Palin have the discipline to play nice?“Ultimately, someone’s got to get to 50 percent,” said Moore, the pollster. “That’s tough to do when 56 percent don’t like you.”Moore said that in the fall, when he modeled Palin’s inclusion in a hypothetical four-way Senate general election between Senator Lisa Murkowski, the Republican incumbent; Kelly Tshibaka, the hard-right Republican challenger; and Elvi Gray-Jackson, a Democratic state lawmaker, Palin was eliminated in the first round.Alaska’s fierce independent streak could also hurt Palin’s chances. More than 60 percent of its voters are not registered members of either major political party, and Trump is not especially popular. According to Moore, 43 percent of Alaskans have a “very negative” opinion of the former president.“Alaskans don’t like people from ‘outside’ telling them how to vote,” said Dermot Cole, an author and political blogger in Alaska. For that reason, he said, Trump’s endorsement is unlikely to carry much weight.Why Palin would want to return to politics is a bit of a mystery. She never enjoyed being governor, according to emails published by a disgruntled former aide, and she always seemed to resent the bruising coverage she received from the national news media. Alaska political observers could not recall her participating in any local causes over the 13 years since she announced that she would not be finishing her term, either.That abrupt departure, in favor of cultivating her national celebrity status, could undermine whatever advantages her famous name and Trump’s endorsement have given her, several of the observers said.“When she quit, she lost a great deal of whatever support she had left,” Cole said.But Palin has always made her own choices. Announcing her resignation in July 2009, she explained that she had no intention to do the expected.“We’re fishermen,” she said. “We know that only dead fish go with the flow.”What to read tonightPresident Biden called Russian attacks on civilians in Bucha, a suburb of Ukraine’s capital, a “war crime.” And an analysis of satellite images by The Times refuted claims by Russia that the killings in Bucha had occurred after its soldiers had left the town. Read the latest on the war in Ukraine.Democrats’ calls for the Justice Department to take more aggressive action in the Jan. 6 investigation are putting pressure on Attorney General Merrick Garland, who has maintained a deliberative approach.A major report from a United Nations panel found that while nations have made some progress in moving away from fossil fuels, they need to move much faster to retain any hope of preventing a perilous future for the planet.As Republican activists aggressively pursue conservative social policies in state legislatures across the country, liberal states are taking defensive actions, our colleagues Shawn Hubler and Jill Cowan report. This flurry of action is intensifying the differences between life in liberal- and conservative-led parts of the country — and it’s a sign of the consequences when state governments are controlled increasingly by single parties.Thanks for reading. We’ll see you tomorrow.— Blake & LeahIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Sarah Palin Announces She’s Running for Congress in Alaska

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      Ms. Palin released a statement on Friday that she was entering the race to replace Representative Don Young, who died last month.Sarah Palin, a former Alaska governor and the Republican nominee for vice president in 2008, said Friday that she was entering the race for Alaska’s lone congressional seat, marking her return to national politics after she helped revive the anti-establishment rhetoric that has come to define the Republican Party.She will be joining a crowded field of nearly 40 candidates to fill the House seat left vacant by Representative Don Young, whose unexpected death last month has spurred one of the largest political shifts in the state in 50 years.Ms. Palin said in a statement that she planned to honor Mr. Young’s legacy, while painting a dystopian picture of a nation in crisis and criticizing the “radical left,” high gas prices, inflation and illegal immigration.“America is at a tipping point,” she said in the statement. “As I’ve watched the far left destroy the country, I knew I had to step up and join the fight.”Ms. Palin has suggested launching various campaigns for elected office several times in the years since August 2008, when Senator John McCain plucked her from obscurity and named her as his running mate on the Republican presidential ticket.But after a long hiatus from political life, Ms. Palin had hinted in recent weeks that she was more serious than she had been in the past about running for office again. In a recent appearance on Fox News with Sean Hannity, Ms. Palin said, “There is a time and a season for everything.”And she invoked former President Donald J. Trump as an inspiration. The two had shared a stage in 2016 when she endorsed him for president. “We need people like Donald Trump, who has nothing to lose. Like me,” she said.On the conservative cable network Newsmax, she did not rule out the possibility of running for Mr. Young’s seat last week, saying that she would consider it an honor. “If I were asked to serve in the House and take his place, I would be humbled and honored,” Ms. Palin told the network. “In a heartbeat, I would.”In her statement on Friday, Ms. Palin pointed to her legacy of service in Alaska, where she was first elected to the City Council in Wasilla three decades ago. She said she still lives in Wasilla and said her loyalty would remain with the state even if she was sent to Washington.Echoing the red-meat politics that have energized Republican voters, she said the nation needed leaders who would “combat the left’s socialist, big-government, America-last agenda.”Her decision to enter the race came as she has received national attention for suing The New York Times for libel.Ms. Palin claimed that The Times defamed her when it published a 2017 editorial erroneously linking her political rhetoric to a mass shooting. A jury threw out the suit, a day after the federal judge in the case indicated he would dismiss the claims if the jury ruled in her favor because her legal team had failed to meet the high legal standards for public figures who claim defamation. The Times, which acknowledged and corrected the error in question soon after it was published, has not lost a libel case in an American courtroom in at least 50 years.Mr. Young, 88, who was the longest-serving Republican in Congress and who was first elected in 1973, died on March 18. The scramble among potential candidates to fill his unexpired term started almost immediately. Friday was the deadline to file official paperwork, and the Alaska Division of Elections had received submissions from 37 candidates by Friday afternoon.A special election will be held on June 11. The top four candidates who get the most votes move ahead to the special general election on Aug. 16. The state will be using a unique “top four” system for the first time. The regular open primary for Mr. Young’s seat and the special general election are being held on the same day, a move that might lead to confusion.Ms. Palin will face a host of both far-right and establishment Republican rivals, including Nick Begich III, the Republican scion of Alaskan political royalty; State Senator Joshua Revak, an Iraq war veteran who previously worked for Mr. Young; and Tara Sweeney, who served in the Trump administration as assistant secretary of the interior for Indian affairs.“She certainly has a constituency,” Art Hackney, a consultant on Mr. Revak’s campaign, said of Ms. Palin, adding that “whoever wants to file” will have to “bring it on” to defeat Mr. Revak.Ms. Palin will also have some formidable progressive challengers, including Al Gross, a former orthopedic surgeon who ran unsuccessfully for Senate in 2020 and is running as an independent, and Christopher Constant, an openly gay Democrat who is a member of the Anchorage Assembly.Ms. Palin, who became one of only three women to run on a major party’s presidential ticket, had declined to seek the presidency in 2012, when several of the activists who would help Mr. Trump get elected tried to convince her to run against former President Barack Obama.Lately, she has been back on Fox News, which once employed her as a contributor for $1 million a year, laying the groundwork for her campaign. 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