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That 48-way election? I’m done talking about that. We’ve got a top four in the U.S. House special primary.
Ballots are still arriving by mail, but The Associated Press on Wednesday night called the race for Sarah Palin, Nick Begich III and Al Gross. They’ll be three of the four candidates who advance to the general in August. The race callers did not include Mary Peltola, currently in fourth place. They estimate that nearly 20% of the vote remains uncounted so she could be overtaken by another candidate.
But Tara Sweeney, the candidate behind her, seems to have made her own call.
“My goal was to get into the top four in the special election,” she said in an emailed statement Wednesday night. “Based on the release of returns from the Division of Elections, it looks like I will fall just short.”
She didn’t explicitly say it, but Sweeney seems to be throwing in the towel on the special. And I’m standing by for her next announcement.
“In the coming days I will be meeting with my campaign team and supporters to determine next steps for the regular election,” Sweeney’s Wednesday email said.
Her fifth-place finish is kind of astounding, given the amount of money backing Sweeney, a former executive at Arctic Slope Regional Corp. Sweeney’s campaign raised $230,000. An independent group working to get her elected, Alaskans for T.A.R.A., raised another $400,000, largely from Native corporations and their affiliates. It comes to about $85 raised per vote in her column.
And yet Peltola, who reported $82,000 in contributions, is ahead. She raised roughly $7 per vote.
There are lots of reasons. For one, Sweeney is a Republican, and there wasn’t a lot of Republican vote left for her because Palin and Begich soaked up so much of it.
But I keep thinking about what Art Hackney said. He’s a political media consultant who has been working his marketing magic on Alaska candidates for many decades, often with large budgets to play with. “It doesn’t work if you’re not a compelling candidate,” he told me.
Hackney also gave big props to Peltola’s campaign professionals at Ship Creek Group, a young firm founded by political strategist John-Henry Heckendorn.
Ultimately, it may not matter, though. I talked to one campaign operative who has access to data that hasn’t been made public. He told me Palin wins in every scenario he can come up with. He’s sad about that.
I also talked to a different campaign operative, a Republican not on Team Palin, who looked at different data. He told me there’s no way Palin can win.
Keep in mind that campaigning can make a big difference and that the results we see in the special primary have only limited application to the next three U.S. House votes Alaskans will take. For starters, it’s the only one where the Division of Elections essentially put ballots in every voter’s mailbox.
Thanks for reading. I welcome your news tips, comments and story suggestions.
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