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    Alaska Elections: Where to Vote and What’s on the Ballot

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    Do not be misled by Alaska’ long history of voting for Republicans: Its slate of primaries and a special election on Tuesday offers plenty of intrigue, with multiple big names on the ballot such as former Gov. Sarah Palin and Senator Lisa Murkowski.The races pose another test of the power of an endorsement from former President Donald J. Trump. He is backing Ms. Palin, the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee, for the state’s lone House seat, and also supports Kelly Tshibaka, Ms. Murkowski’s main Republican rival in the Senate primary.Here is a refresher on the rules for voting and what is at stake.How to voteThe registration deadlines for voting in person and requesting an absentee ballot have passed. Alaska does not have same-day registration for primaries, though it does for presidential elections.All registered voters, regardless of party affiliation, can participate in Alaska’s newly nonpartisan primaries.Where to voteAlaska’s voters can click here to look up their assigned place to vote. Absentee ballots returned by mail must be postmarked by Tuesday and received by state election offices by Aug. 26. They can also be hand-delivered to designated drop-off locations by 8 p.m. Alaska time on Tuesday, which is also when the polls close for in-person voting.Alaska offers no-excuse absentee voting — meaning voters are not required to provide a reason — with an option to receive ballots through the state’s secure online portal. Voters can choose to return their ballots by fax instead of mail but must do so by 8 p.m. on Tuesday.What is on the ballotMs. Murkowski was one of seven Republicans in the Senate who voted to convict Mr. Trump during his impeachment trial after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, drawing a backlash from the former president and his supporters in her quest for a fourth term. Mr. Trump endorsed one her opponents, Ms. Tshibaka, a former commissioner of Alaska’s Department of Administration, in the primary.Another race creating national intrigue will decide who will fill the seat of Representative Don Young, a Republican who died in March, for the remainder of his term that ends in January. Mr. Young had held the seat since he was first elected to the House in 1973.The special election is headlined by Ms. Palin, who will face Nick Begich III, a Republican and the scion of an Alaskan political dynasty, and Mary S. Peltola, a Democrat and former state legislator. Voters will rank their choices in the special election. If no candidate receives a majority, officials will eliminate the last-place finisher and reallocate supporters’ voter to the voters’ second choices until one candidate has at least 50 percent.All three candidates, along with many others, are also listed separately on the regular primary ballot for the House seat, which will determine who will compete in November to represent the state for a full two-year term starting in January.Voters will also decide various races for governor and the State Legislature. Click here for a sample ballot. More

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      In Alaska, Sarah Palin’s Political Comeback Stirs Debate Among Voters

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      WASILLA, Alaska — At one of her hometown churches in a mountainous valley of south-central Alaska, Sarah Palin’s star has dimmed lately.In the small city of Wasilla on Sunday, some of the congregants who had helped fuel her political rise years ago were weighing whether to back her bid for Alaska’s lone congressional seat in the state’s special election and primary on Tuesday.“Sarah is conservative, but she seems to have been drawn more into the politics of politics, rather than the values,” said Scott Johannes, 59, a retired contractor attending Wasilla Bible Church. He said he was undecided. “I think her influences are from outside of the state now,” he said.But nearby, at another Wasilla church Ms. Palin has attended, Joelle Sanchez, 38, said she still believed Ms. Palin stood with Alaskans, even though she does not always agree with the candidate’s sharp-edged persona. Ms. Sanchez’s relatives and friends have been torn over whether to support Ms. Palin’s run for Congress, she said.“I feel like they are looking at her through a dirty lens,” said Ms. Sanchez, a pastor at Church on The Rock who was leaning toward backing Ms. Palin. “I will not vote until I’ve spent time doing a little more research,” she added.Joelle Sanchez said that she did not always agree with Ms. Palin’s sharp-edged persona, but that she believed the House candidate stood with Alaskans.Ash Adams for The New York TimesIn churches and coffee shops, on conservative airwaves and right-wing social media, Alaskan voters have debated Ms. Palin’s motives in staging a political comeback — whether she’s interested in public service or in seeking more fame.Ms. Palin, the former governor of the state and 2008 vice-presidential Republican nominee, cleared one hurdle in June when she led a field of 48 candidates in a special primary election to fill the seat of longtime Representative Don Young, who died in March as he flew home. But she faces the next test on Tuesday in a complex special election that will allow voters to rank their top choices.Ms. Palin’s campaign did not respond to multiple requests for interviews. In a lengthy interview with The Anchorage Daily News after she announced her run in April, Ms. Palin disputed claims that she was not committed to Alaska.“The establishment machine in the Republican Party is very, very, very small. They have a loud voice. They hold purse strings. They have the media’s ear. But they do not necessarily reflect the will of the people,” Ms. Palin told the newspaper.More Coverage of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsAbortion Ads: Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, Democrats have spent nearly eight times as much on abortion-related ads as Republicans have, with Democratic strategists believing the issue has radically reshaped the 2022 landscape in their party’s favor.Liz Cheney: If the G.O.P. congresswoman loses her upcoming primary, as is widely expected, it will end the run of the Cheney dynasty in Wyoming. But she says her crusade to stop Donald J. Trump will continue.Arizona Governor’s Race: Like other hard-right candidates this year, Kari Lake won her G.O.P. primary by running on election lies. But her polished delivery, honed through decades as a TV news anchor, have landed her in a category all her own.Climate, Health and Tax Bill: The Senate’s passage of the legislation has Democrats sprinting to sell the package by November and experiencing a flicker of an unfamiliar feeling: hope.Interviews with two dozen voters and strategists in Wasilla, Palmer and Anchorage on Saturday and Sunday captured the challenges ahead for Ms. Palin, who won an endorsement from former President Donald J. Trump but who pollsters say has a tough hill to climb in November because of her low approval ratings.Several voters said Ms. Palin had abandoned Alaska, after she resigned from the governor’s office in 2009 amid ethics complaints and legal bills. But Ms. Palin’s support remains strong among other Republicans, including conservative women who have followed her political rise and have seen themselves in her struggles as a working mother.“She is genuine, she’s authentic — what you see is what you get,” said T.J. DeSpain, 51, an art therapist who attended an outdoor concert in Palmer and who said she was drawn to Ms. Palin’s rock-star-like status. “She looks like Alaska Barbie.”Ms. Palin faces multiple candidates in the special election to fill the remainder of Mr. Young’s term. They include Mary Peltola, a Democrat who could become the first Alaska Native in Congress, and Nicholas Begich III, the Republican scion of the state’s most prominent Democratic political family. Tara Sweeney, a former Trump administration official, is running as a write-in candidate.A campaign sign in Palmer, Alaska. Ms. Palin has encouraged supporters to rank her, and no one else, on their ranked-choice ballots.Ash Adams for The New York TimesThe special election, which for the first time will allow voters to rank their choices, is happening alongside the state’s nonpartisan primary election to fill the House seat from 2023 onward. In that race, voters have been asked to make their selection from a list of 22 candidates of all parties and affiliations that also includes Ms. Palin.The new ranking system has rankled some Republicans who argue that it waters down their vote. Ms. Palin has encouraged supporters to rank her — and her alone.Establishment Republicans have urged the party’s voters to rate Ms. Palin and Mr. Begich in the top slots, fearing that Ms. Peltola, the Democrat, could clear a path to victory. Should Mr. Begich or Ms. Peltola prevail in the special election, a win for either one could serve as a major boost in momentum and name recognition.In Wasilla and the nearby city of Palmer, several voters still remembered the days when Ms. Palin competed in beauty queen pageants and starred on the high school basketball team. Some said they admired how she had never seemed to lose her down-to-earth personality, even as her star rose, and how she always appeared willing to strike up a conversation at the local grocery store or at Target.And many had also not forgotten 2008, when Ms. Palin vaulted to the national stage as Senator John McCain’s running mate and seemed to take on a new and unrecognizable persona. Her anti-establishment language has since come to define the Republican Party, and other candidates have followed suit.Some Alaskans see her status as a far-right celebrity as an asset, as did a few callers into “The Mike Porcaro Show,” a conservative talk radio program. They argued that Ms. Palin would be able to bring attention to Alaska in a way that a lesser-known newcomer to Congress would not.But her fame has most likely cost her support as well. “Now she likes to be in the limelight with all these brazen comments and things,” said Jim Jurgeleit, 64, a retired engineer who said he was voting for Ms. Peltola.Ms. Palin has mostly been on the reality TV circuit and promoting other Republicans outside the state since she resigned from the governor’s office. Some argue she has spent more time on the conservative channel Newsmax or in the lower 48 states than on the campaign trail. Janet Kincaid, 88, the owner of the Colony Inn in Palmer, once opened her lakeside home in Wasilla for a $20,000 fund-raiser when Ms. Palin ran for governor. Now, she preferred to talk about Mr. Begich, for whom she has hosted two fund-raisers.Janet Kincaid, who once hosted a fund-raiser for Ms. Palin, intends to support Nick Begich this year.Ash Adams for The New York Times“To be frank, I’m a strong supporter of Nick Begich,” she said. “I think he’d be better for the job.”On Monday evening, Ms. Palin’s former in-laws were also hosting a fund-raiser for Mr. Begich at their Wasilla home. Jim Palin, the father of Ms. Palin’s ex-husband, Todd, declined to comment on Ms. Palin. But when asked why he was supporting his former daughter-in-law’s rival, he said, “He will stay in that job for as long as we want him to be.”At a vintage car show in downtown Palmer, Richard Johnson showed off his 1963 Pontiac Grand Prix. He said he still saw Ms. Palin as reflective of his old-school, conservative values and planned to vote for her. “She is a quitter,” he added, “but at least she stands for something.” More

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      Sarah Palin Leads Primary Race for Alaska’s Special Election

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      The top four candidates will advance to an August vote to finish the term of Representative Don Young, who died in March.Former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska leads the 48-candidate field in a special primary election for the state’s sole congressional seat, according to a preliminary count of ballots on Sunday.The top four candidates in the race will advance to the special election in August. Ms. Palin has nearly 30 percent of the vote tallied so far; Nick Begich, the scion of an Alaskan political dynasty, has 19.3 percent; Al Gross, a surgeon and commercial fisherman who ran for Senate two years ago, has nearly 12.5 percent; and Mary S. Peltola, a former state legislator, has about 7.5 percent.Ms. Palin and Mr. Begich are Republicans, Mr. Gross is not affiliated with a party, and Ms. Peltola is a Democrat.The special election was prompted by the death in March of Representative Don Young, a Republican who was first elected to the House in 1973. The election is to fill the remainder of Mr. Young’s current term.The special election will be held on Aug. 16, which is also the day of Alaska’s primary contest for the House seat’s 2023-2025 term. So, voters will see some candidates’ names twice on one ballot: once to decide the outcome of the special election and once to pick candidates for the fall’s general election for the full two-year term.For Ms. Palin, the race is a political comeback. As Senator John McCain’s running mate in the 2008 presidential race, Ms. Palin lost to a Democratic ticket that included Joseph R. Biden Jr., and she resigned from the governor’s office, seeking to parlay her newfound profile into work as a well-paid political pundit. Ms. Palin had tapped into a similar anti-establishment, anti-news media vein of the Republican Party that later galvanized Donald J. Trump’s unexpected rise to the White House in 2016.The results announced on Sunday are preliminary and could change over the next few weeks, as more ballots are processed and counted.Alaska is a thinly populated state, with two U.S. senators but only one representative in the House. That small population is spread across an area that is larger than Texas, California and Montana combined, with about 82 percent of communities in the state inaccessible by roads.Counting ballots there can be challenging.Each voter in the state was mailed a ballot, starting on April 27, and the ballots were due back on Saturday. At least three more rounds of preliminary results will be announced by state officials before the results are certified in about two weeks.Alyce McFadden 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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      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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      Race to Replace Don Young Is Set to Be a Fascinating Political Experiment

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      The election to fill the seat of the Alaska congressman, who died last week, promises to be a Yukon adventure. It’s also a fascinating political experiment in the making.How do you replace a man who once willingly put his hand in a steel trap during a congressional hearing until it turned blue? Who waggled an 18-inch walrus penis bone at a top administration official? Who held a knife to the throat of a fellow lawmaker?How, in sum, do you replace Don Young?The death of Representative Young at age 88 last week leaves a void that won’t easily be filled, Alaskan political insiders tell us. Young was the longest-serving Republican in the history of Congress, a living relic who decorated his House office with stuffed animal trophies and larded his speech with profanity. He cultivated the image of a crude frontiersman in Washington while protecting Alaska’s extractive industries and, as our colleague Emily Cochrane writes today, steering billions of federal dollars to pet projects back home.Young flouted ethics rules with abandon. Regulators once forced him to repay nearly $60,000 for trips to hunting lodges that had been financed through campaign money. On another occasion, he was accused of taking bribes, though no formal charges were brought against him. His irascible outbursts often got him into trouble, as when he referred to Latino immigrants with an ethnic slur or when, before an audience of high school students, he used a profane term for anal sex when describing a photography exhibit.In a replacement, Alaskans are looking for “someone who will go to Washington, give the bureaucrats hell and bring home the pork,” said Michael Carey, a columnist for The Anchorage Daily News and a longtime Young observer. “But I don’t think anybody can wrap themselves in his mythos.”Just days after Young’s death, the race to succeed him is well underway. Friday is the deadline to file official paperwork, and potential candidates are already lining up.Al Gross, a former orthopedic surgeon who ran unsuccessfully for Senate in 2020, is running as a “nonpartisan.” He is perhaps best known for a goofy music video promoting his candidacy that includes the line, “He’s killed a bear, caught lots of fish, not swayed by party politics” and ends by describing him as “Alaska’s own bear doctor.”John Coghill, a former state senator with ties to the evangelical community, is running as a Republican. Nick Begich III, the Republican scion of Alaskan political royalty, has also indicated that he will enter the race, as has Christopher Constant, an openly gay Democrat who is a member of the Anchorage Assembly.Few expect Sarah Palin, a former Alaska governor and the Republican nominee for vice president in 2008, to run. She told Sean Hannity, the Fox News host, last week that she was weighing whether to “throw my hat in the ring,” but made no commitment.Some in the Republican establishment favor Joshua Revak, an Iraq war veteran who previously worked for Young and is now a state senator. There’s also Tara Sweeney, an Alaska Native whose husband, Kevin Sweeney, is a consultant for Senator Lisa Murkowski’s re-election campaign. Tara Sweeney served in the Trump administration as assistant secretary of the interior for Indian affairs.Young’s death came as he faced growing doubts about his political longevity, with the prospect of being squeezed from left and right for the first time.“For years, Don was this untouchable Alaskan institution,” said John-Henry Heckendorn, a political consultant in Anchorage. “He had always been able to turn his fire and intensity on one enemy. But he had never really had to fight a war on two fronts.”Alaska’s political experimentWhoever ultimately decides to run, the House special election to replace Young will be watched closely. For the first time, the state will be using its unique “top four” primary system — and Alaskans aren’t sure what to expect.In the first round of the special election, to be held on June 11, every candidate appears on the same ballot. Voters each pick one candidate, and the four top vote-getters move ahead to the special general election, scheduled for Aug. 16. Voters then rank up to four favorites, including a write-in option. If no one earns an outright majority, election officials eliminate the lowest-ranking candidate, repeating the process up to three times until there is a winner.Supporters of the system say it will break the stranglehold political parties have over primary elections, give voters more choices and create incentives for bipartisan cooperation.“We’re already seeing more and different kinds of names, which is great for voters,” said Jason Grenn, the executive director of Alaskans for Better Elections, a nonprofit group that promotes the top-four system.Some confusion might be inevitable. In a quirk of scheduling prompted by Young’s death, the regular open primary for his seat will be held the same day as the special general election for his seat. That means Alaskans will be choosing someone to represent them in Washington for the next two years even as they also choose someone to represent them for the remainder of 2022. It could be the same person — or someone completely different. Senator Lisa Murkowski is defending her seat against Kelly Tshibaka, a Republican challenger.Sarahbeth Maney/The New York TimesThe Murkowski factorThe top-four system will also be used in Alaska’s Senate election, a fact that has spawned accusations of political intrigue.Former President Donald Trump has made it his mission to oust Murkowski, who is defending her seat against Kelly Tshibaka, a Republican challenger. Murkowski was one of only seven Republican senators who voted to convict Trump during the impeachment trial last year, earning her a rebuke from the state’s Republican Party. As an incumbent, she has the backing of Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, pitting the party’s establishment against its Trump wing.Tshibaka’s campaign team claims that the top-four system, which was adopted by ballot initiative in 2020, was devised to aid Murkowski’s re-election.There’s little evidence of that, though Kathryn Murdoch, an independent donor who helped fund the ballot initiative, said in an interview this month that the top-four system “allows Lisa Murkowski to be herself instead of worrying about her extreme right flank.”The claim prompts a chuckle from supporters of the system, who say that it is meant to alleviate the gridlock that often paralyzes Alaskan politics, and that it is not a product of Washington power games.“I haven’t talked to Lisa Murkowski in three or four years,” said Grenn, who is also a former state legislator. “There are no dark shadows behind the scenes.”What to read Republicans in Florida and Ohio are pushing for a greater advantage on their congressional maps.President Biden’s budget request for fiscal year 2023 includes about $45 billion to take on climate change, which will be crucial to setting U.S. policy ahead of the midterms.California leaders are drafting legislation to help make the state a sanctuary for transgender youths and for people seeking abortions, as conservative states move forward with anti-abortion and anti-L.G.B.T.Q. laws.Federal prosecutors and congressional investigators have found growing evidence that a tweet by Donald Trump in December 2020 urging supporters to come to Washington on Jan. 6 was a catalyst for far-right militants.briefing bookJustice Clarence Thomas with his wife, Virginia Thomas, before he spoke at the conservative Heritage Foundation in October.Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesThe ballad of Clarence and GinniCongressional investigators want to know why Virginia Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, exchanged conspiracy-theory-tinged texts with Trump administration officials about overturning the 2020 election in the weeks leading up to the Capitol riot. Democrats are calling for Justice Thomas to recuse himself from any Supreme Court cases about the events of Jan. 6, while they press for more details about her involvement in that day’s drama.To better understand this unorthodox Washington pair, we chatted with Danny Hakim, an investigative reporter for The New York Times who recently wrote, with Jo Becker, a deeply reported Times Magazine article on the Thomases. Here’s our conversation:What first sparked your interest in them as a couple?The court has really moved toward Justice Thomas in the post-Trump era, since the pick of Amy Coney Barrett took place in the waning days of the Trump administration. For years, Justice Thomas was known for solo dissents or sharply written dissenting opinions, but now some of those might become majority opinions as the court’s dynamics have tilted.At the same time, his wife was a hard-line activist on the fringes of the party before she flourished in the Trump era, to the point she had direct access to the president. She has remained an important figure in the Trump wing of the party.There’s a line in your article that mentions that Ginni Thomas was in a group she later denounced as a “cult.” Were you able to learn anything more about her time there?The group was called Lifespring, and it was popular for a while. The best story I read about it was a 1987 piece in The Washington Post by Marc Fisher, who went to some meetings. The group would sort of break you down and get you crying and then try to build you back up, but it was quite controversial. One trainee told Fisher it was “like an enema of your emotions.”Ms. Thomas took part in the group in the early 1980s and then rejected it. And she took Clarence Thomas with her to at least one meeting of an anti-cult group that she attended in the wake of her departure from Lifespring.Ginni Thomas refers to her “best friend” in one of the texts that has emerged. Is it a leap to assume that’s a reference to her husband?We can’t say for sure, but they have used that kind of language when they describe each other. In his memoir, Justice Thomas refers to his wife as his “best friend.” She has called him “the best man walking the face of the Earth,” and friends of theirs whom we talked with told us they referred to each other that way. Justice Thomas has gone even further and called the two of them “one being — an amalgam.”Is your sense that Ginni Thomas is someone whose advice carries weight in the Republican Party, or is she someone who is humored because of her political connections and because of who her husband happens to be?It’s a good question. I think both. Her proximity to Justice Thomas is central to her influence, and it’s the reason she got the access she did to the Trump White House. She does not hesitate to invoke her husband’s name in her interactions with party officials and activists.At the same time, while establishment Republicans are often exasperated by her and see some of her views as outlandish, she does have a following among the hard-line wing of the party that is so prominent now, and she has spent years working in Washington alongside people like Steve Bannon to move the party to the right.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