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Why an Alaskan who talks a lot about fish could win Democrats for the House of Representatives – Mother Jones


Why an Alaskan who talks a lot about fish could win Democrats for the House of Representatives – Mother Jones

Mary Peltola, a Blue Dog Democrat who unexpectedly won her seat in 2022, is Alaska's first Native American congresswoman. Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via ZUMA Press

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This year of America largest state is poised to play a key role in deciding who controls the House of Representatives.

Incumbent Mary Peltola (D-Alaska) — the state's first Native American elected to Congress and the first Democratic representative in 50 years — will defend her seat in a tight race against challenger Nick Begich III. Begich is a software developer, partner in a conspiracy theory publishing company and surprising Republican heir to a multi-generational Democratic political line.

Peltola's victory was a surprise upset in 2022. She beat former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin with a “Fish, Family and Freedom” campaign and promised to “ignore the partisanship of the Lower 48” and focus on solutions. In Congress, she was a member of the new Blue Dog Democrats, a loose group of 11 Democratic members pushing centrist policies.

Alaska uses ranked choice voting. So while the winner will almost certainly be Peltola or Begich, the secondary choice of voters who chose underage candidates will also be important. (The process will also slow down the counting of ballots, meaning we may not know the result on Election Day itself.)

In Alaska, rural areas tend to toe the Democratic Party line while cities vote red. It's a place where the main issues aren't the “culture wars you'll see upstate,” as Michelle Sparck, director of the nonprofit Get Out The Native Vote, put it. “60 percent of Alaskans do not identify with one party or the other.” Instead, the things people will vote on will likely be much more specific: fishing regulations, oil policy and electricity subsidies.

Overall, Peltola has focused her campaign on keeping the issues local. At a debate on October 10, she converted a question about immigration into an answer about emigration. Over the past 12 years, more Alaskans have left the state than moved to it, pushed out by high prices and limited job opportunities.

“We need immigration reform,” she said, but “I don't think this is necessarily an Alaskan problem. “This is definitely a lower 48 problem…Alaska is desperate for workers and we have an out-migration problem in Alaska.”

Peltola has spent most of her time in Congress tackling issues of immediate importance to her base: funding for broadband internet in rural Alaska and, of course, fishing. Across much of the state, subsistence hunters face “salmon shortages” in warming waters, and the state’s fishing industry loses billions each year.

And while abortion wasn't always an issue that could be addressed from Peltola's central position, she has made it a cornerstone of her re-election campaign. “Being pregnant and giving birth is one of the deadliest things a woman can do in her life,” she said recently. “Countless things can go wrong, and it is not the job of anyone in Washington DC or the state legislature to come between a woman and her doctor.”

Nick Begich and Peltola have a lot in common: They both support military spending in Alaska, the development of a trans-Alaska natural gas pipeline, and Second Amendment rights.

However, Begich has also said he will not support federal funding for abortion and, like many Republican candidates, has spent time during debates criticizing the size of the federal budget. The longest paragraph on Begich's policy positions website addresses the importance of cryptocurrency to Alaska's future. While he talks a lot about the Second Amendment, Peltola is the candidate endorsed by the National Rifle Association.

John Howe of the Alaskan Independence Party, whose platform includes abolishing all taxes, is likely to receive a small percentage of Alaska's 600,000 votes. And Eric Hafner, currently incarcerated in New Jersey for bomb threats, is also running as a Democrat in Alaska, although he has never been there. (Hafner also ran for Congress in Hawaii in 2016 and in Oregon in 2018, the latter campaign on the run from the law.)

Neither the tax destroyer nor the prisoner have much chance of winning the race. However, they could help tip the scales in favor of Begich, as Republican consultant Matt Shuckerow speculated to the US government New York Times recently. “The chances of Eric Hafner having an impact on this election are legitimate and real,” he said. “This is an extremely close race and every vote will count.” For example, if voters chose Howe first and Begich second, their second-place vote would count more than their first-place vote.

Begich is loyal to his party, and in a state that is virtually majority Republican, that could be enough to win. However, this technical majority does not tell the whole story. In the 86 percent of Alaska communities that are not connected by roads and are typically majority Native, residents are unlikely to declare a party affiliation. “Long-term investment in party politics is truly the privilege of a people with a road network,” says Michelle Sparck of Get Out The Native Vote. These communities could also influence the election.

But disinvestment in voting infrastructure in rural, majority-Indigenous counties can lead to low voter turnout. In 2020, voter turnout was just 38 percent in the Northwest Arctic Borough, where 83.8 percent of voting-age residents are Indigenous. In many cases, counting these votes requires flying ballots from small, remote villages into cities in bush planes. “Even if the weather wasn’t a barrier, there are all sorts of systemic barriers at play that are a chronic polling problem for many of our rural villages,” Sparck said. In Bethel, Peltola's hometown, 56 percent of voters went to the polls in 2022. It is a town of 6,000 people and only one polling station.

Alaska's race is one of the few that determines control of the House of Representatives. Because the state only has one House seat, it cannot be gerrymandered — making it a real contest in a way that few other House districts can.

However, on the final day before the election, Peltola's social media posts focused less on Democrats' control of the House and more on the fish. “Tomorrow we will decide the future of our fishery,” Peltola wrote. “Are we working to restore abundance and feed our communities for generations to come, or are we witnessing a collapse in our fisheries?”

“When Mary and I were kids, our rivers were full of fish,” recalls Get Out The Native Vote’s Sparck. “We don’t have that anymore. If we had crickets in Alaska, all you would hear is crickets out there. And it's a great shame that there aren't even enough fish left in our rivers to support a secure livelihood. It’s literally beneath our feet what’s happening to the world.”

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