Alaska Lieutenant Governor Nancy Dahlstrom announced Friday that she is suspending her campaign for Congress, in a potentially surprising blow to Democrats’ chances of winning a key red-state seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Dahlstrom was essentially in a three-way race with incumbent Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola and Republican Nick Begich III – who comes from a prominent political family on the final frontier.
Although Dahlstrom did not immediately endorse Begich, she suggested in comments about her withdrawal that she had fought for her candidacy to see Peltola defeated.
“I entered this race because the people of Alaska deserve better representation than we got in Washington through Mary Peltola,” Dahlstrom said in a statement.
“The best thing I can do at this time to achieve this goal is to withdraw my candidacy for the general election and end my campaign,” she said.
RANKED CHOICE VOTING RANKLES ELECTION SEASON
A juxtaposition of Nancy Dahlstrom and Mary Peltola
Because the state adopted ranked-choice popular voting in 2020, Alaska’s elections now differ from those in most other states in that the candidate who receives the majority of votes is not necessarily declared the winner.
This aspect was at the heart of Peltola’s first election campaign, which he won to succeed Republican Rep. Don Young, who has served for five decades and will die in office in 2022 at the age of 88.
Peltola defeated both Begich and former Governor Sarah Palin, both of whom ran as Republicans.
Although the two GOP candidates received more votes than Peltola, she was declared the winner after the completion of the hierarchical rounds of ranked-choice voting. Under this system, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and instead the votes of that candidate’s voters are counted for the “second choice,” and so on.
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Nick Begich is a Republican running for Alaska’s only seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. (AP)
Under the more traditional electoral system, Alaska is a reliably Republican state, currently at R+9, according to the Cook Political Report. Republicans currently control the U.S. House of Representatives by a vote of 220 to 211, with four seats vacant. A less contested race in Alaska could give Republicans more breathing room.
Republicans, including Kelly Tshibaka, who lost to Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) in a ranked-choice race, have condemned the system as “bait for (political) negativity.” But other supporters said it helps suppress partisanship and support more moderate candidates.
Begich – whose uncle Mark was a Democratic senator and whose grandfather Nick Sr. was Young’s Democratic predecessor before he disappeared in a plane crash in 1972 – said Dahlstrom ran a “strong campaign” and thanked her for her service to the public.
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Anchorage, Alaska (above) has always been one of the most violent cities in the USA (Zihao Chen via Getty Images)
“Today we move forward together to replace Mary Peltola, who has proven by her alignment with the left that she is not the moderate politician she claimed to be. I look forward to continuing to travel across Alaska to gain your support and bring Alaska’s incredible history to our nation’s capital,” Begich said.
“North, into the future,” he added.
Fox News Digital has reached out to Peltola and her campaign team for comment.
