Sarah Palin, a former governor of Alaska and the Republican nominee for vice president in 2008, said Friday she was running for Alaska’s only congressional seat, marking her return to national politics after helping the anti-government government. to revive establishment rhetoric. define the Republican Party.
She will join a crowded field of nearly 40 candidates to fill the House seat vacated by Representative Don Young, whose unexpected death last month sparked one of the biggest political shifts in the state in 50 years.
Ms Palin said in a statement she intended to honor Mr Young’s legacy as she painted a dystopian picture of a nation in crisis and criticized the “radical left”, high gas prices, inflation and illegal immigration.
“America is at a tipping point,” she said in the statement. “While watching the far left ravage the country, I knew I had to stand up and join the fray.”
Ms. Palin has proposed several times in the years since August 2008 to launch various campaigns for elected office, when Senator 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, Mrs. Palin hinted in recent weeks that she was more serious than she had been in the past about running for office again. In a recent Fox News appearance with Sean Hannity, Ms. Palin said, “There is a time and a season for everything.”
And she cited former President Donald J. Trump as inspiration. The two had shared a podium in 2016 when she supported him as president. “We need people like Donald Trump, who has nothing to lose. Like me,’ she said.
On conservative cable network Newsmax, she didn’t rule out the possibility of running for Mr. Young’s seat last week, saying she would consider it an honour. “If I were asked to serve in the House and take his place, I would be humbled and honored,” Ms Palin told the network. “In the blink of an eye I would.”
In her statement on Friday, Ms. Palin pointed to her legacy of service in Alaska, where she was first elected to the Wasilla City Council three decades ago. She said she still lives in Wasilla and said her loyalty would remain with the state even if she was sent to Washington.
Echoing the red meat politics that energized Republican voters, she said the nation needed leaders who would “fight the socialist, big government, America-last agenda of the left.”
Her decision to enter the race came as she received national attention for suing DailyExpertNews for libel.
Ms Palin alleged that The Times defamed her when it published a 2017 editorial falsely linking her political rhetoric to a mass shooting. A jury threw out the lawsuit a day after the federal judge in the case indicated he would dismiss the claims if the jury ruled in her favor because her legal team had failed to meet the high legal standards for public figures claiming defamation. The Times, which acknowledged and corrected the error in question soon after publication, has not lost a libel case in a US courtroom in at least 50 years.
Mr. Young, 88, the longest-serving Republican in Congress and first elected in 1973, died on March 18. The battle among potential candidates to fill his unexpired term began almost immediately. Friday was the deadline to file official paperwork, and the Alaska Division of Elections had received submissions from 37 candidates by Friday afternoon.
A special election will be held on June 11. The top four candidates with the most votes will advance to the special general election on August 16. The state will use a unique “top four” system for the first time. The regular open primaries for the seat of Mr. Young and the special general election will be held on the same day, a move that could lead to confusion.
Ms. Palin will face a host of both far-right and established Republican rivals, including Nick Begich III, the Republican scion of Alaska’s political royalty; State senator Joshua Revak, an Iraq war veteran who previously served for Mr. Young worked; and Tara Sweeney, who served in the Trump administration as the Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs.
“She definitely has a following,” said Art Hackney, an adviser to Mr. Revak, about Mrs. Palin, adding that “whoever wants to submit it” will have to “come” to see Mr. Beat Revak.
Ms. Palin will also have some formidable progressive challengers, including Al Gross, a former orthopedic surgeon who unsuccessfully ran for the Senate in 2020 and is an independent, and Christopher Constant, an openly gay Democrat who is a member of the Anchorage Assembly.
Ms. Palin, who became one of only three women to compete on a major party’s presidential ticket, had refused to run for president in 2012 when several activists who would help Mr. Trump get elected tried to convince her. to take on former President Barack Obama.
Lately, she’s been back on Fox News, which once employed her as an associate for $1 million a year, laying the groundwork for her campaign.
