San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Palin returns to fray, joining race for U.S. House seat
Sarah Palin, a former Alaska governor and the Republican nominee for vice president in 2008, has entered 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 50 other candidates to fill the House seat left vacant by Rep. Don Young, whose unexpected death last month has spurred one of the largest political shifts in the state in 50 years.
Palin said in a statement that she planned to honor Young’s legacy, painting a dystopian picture of the nation in crisis while criticizing the
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is seeking to fill the House seat left vacant by GOP Rep. Don Young, who died March 18.
“radical left,” high gas prices, inflation and illegal immigration.
Palin has suggested launching various campaigns for
elected office several times in the years since August 2008, when Sen. 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, 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, Palin said, “There is a time and a season for everything.”
Young, 88, who was the longest-serving Republican in Congress and who was first elected in 1973, died March 18. The scramble among potential candidates to fill his unexpired term started almost immediately. Friday was the deadline to file official paperwork, and Palin joins a field of dozens. That field includes current and former state legislators and a North Pole city council member named Santa Claus.
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 Sen. Joshua Revak, an Iraq War veteran who previously worked for Young; and Tara Sweeney, who served in the Trump administration as assistant secretary of the interior for Indian affairs.
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.