Sarah Palin leading in statewide balloting

Sitka fisherman and former U.S. Senate candidate Al Gross captured the most votes for Alaska’s only seat in the U.S. House of Representatives among voters in state House District 33, according to results tallied as of Tuesday.

By-mail voting ended Saturday in the special election to fill the seat of Congressman Don Young, who died March 18. Vote tallies for Haines precincts were not available.

Gross, an Independent, and former state Rep. Mary Peltola, a Democrat, led in Haines’ state house district, which includes Klukwan, downtown Juneau, Douglas, Skagway and Gustavus.

Of 15,710 eligible voters in District 33, 3,915 votes have been counted so far, a voter turnout of 24.92%. Statewide voter turnout was 18.6% as of June 11 but will rise as ballots postmarked by June 11 arrive in the mail.

Gross is leading in Haines’ district with 1,009 votes, or 25.8% of the vote. Peltola is in second with 990 votes, or 25.3%.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a Republican, led statewide with 29.8% of votes but tallied only 11.5% in District 33. In second place statewide, Nick Begich III accrued 19.3% of Alaska ballots but only 12.02% in the district.

North Pole councilman and self-described Democratic Socialist Santa Claus was in fifth place in Haines’ district with 270 votes, or 6.9%, but he’s sixth place statewide behind Tara Sweeney, an Iñupiaq businesswoman and former assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Interior.

Begich, whose namesake grandfather represented Alaska in Congress before Don Young, was the only candidate to visit Haines during the primary campaign. Unlike his grandfather and politician uncles, former U.S. Sen. Mark Begich and state Sen. Tom Begich, who are Democrats, Nick Begich III is a Republican.

Alaska has only one representative in the U.S. House. After the elder Begich died in a plane crash, Young served for nearly five decades, becoming the country’s longest-serving Republican congressman. He was 89 years old and had planned to run for reelection.

Statewide, Gross and Peltola were running third and fourth respectively, behind Palin and Begich.

Unofficial results were released last Saturday but votes are still being tallied in the vote-by-mail special primary election with 48 candidates on the ballot. There will be three more updates, and final results are expected to be certified June 25, according to the Alaska Division of Elections.

As of June 11, 78% of the 140,000 total ballots had been tallied.

The top four vote-getters statewide make it to a general election in August that will determine who goes to Washington to fill out the remaining four months of Young’s term.

A separate, regularly-scheduled election will be held in the fall to seat the state’s next congressman. That two-year term begins in January.

Both the special general election and the regular primary are on Aug. 16. The regular general election is on Nov. 8.