Mary Peltola stands a chance of being re-elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.
If she does, Democrats might be onto a formula for winning and holding statewide office, but only if the Alaska Republican Party clown car stays full of shills, carpet-baggers and stooges.
Peltola would be no match for a Jay Hammond or even a Wally Hickel or an Arliss Sturgelewski. But Alaska’s great Republicans are all in the ground, which is opening up the field for Democrats.
Peltola has some great pluses. She’s a veteran lawmaker, a woman and an Alaska Native. Perhaps most impressively, she’s from Bethel, which is Real Alaska. Republicans love to paint Democrats as “outsiders” and “elitists,” but when you’re a Native from western Alaska, that tar doesn’t stick.
There’s no cred among Alaskans like living in the Bush. It was a big part of Hammond’s appeal. I encountered this bias in person while working as a subsistence expert for United Fishermen of Alaska 20 years ago.
Some Anchorage hot-heads would corner me in my information booth at the Palmer fair or the Outdoors Trade Show at Sullivan Arena, looking to lower me a few notches. Like in all political fights in Alaska, invariably they’d start by asking me how long I lived in Alaska and where. Once they learned I lived in Haines 15 years, they backed off a bit.
But Haines is Paris compared to Bethel and points awarded to politicians increase with every mile they live away from the road system.
Peltola also benefits from her endorsement from U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski and the family of the late Don Young, whose seat she filled.
Peltola won that support simply because she’s not screaming about draining the swamp or strangling the government in a bathtub. Wing-nut Republicanism, as embraced by the Alaska Republican Party, has shed many moderates, the same strain of Republicans who abandoned party loyalty to vote for Barack Obama after the GOP had mired the nation in two wars and wrecked the economy.
Most of these folks are 80 or older, but they remember Joe McCarthy and Barry Goldwater and they realize that political fundamentalism is a dead-end street. My old man, a lifelong Republican, switched his voting registration to Democrat and started sending money to the ACLU after George W. Bush stated publicly that he didn’t read newspapers.
Only some of the electorate is content with willful ignorance in the service of loyalty to dogma.
Peltola has the advantage of being a woman and the only pro-choice candidate in an election when abortion rights are weighing heavily on the mind of female voters. Like gay marriage, abortion cuts across party lines and the Supreme Court’s decision last June makes women second-class citizens.
Many women, regardless of party loyalty, don’t want second-class status.
Also working for Peltola is ranked-choice voting, which tends to favor moderate candidates. Peltola faces two zealots, one a true-believer and another a faux maverick. Of the three, Peltola seems the candidate you’d most like to have over for a drink.
You’d probably have a pleasant conversation and maybe learn a few things.
Finally, Alaska has a woman politician who wears a kuspuk like she owns one and not only for campaign photos.
Viva Peltola.