Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) advanced to the general election in yesterday’s primary election for Alaska’s at-large Congressional seat, meaning she will be one of four people to appear on the ballot in the state’s idiosyncratic ranked-choice voting system.
But two people will probably not be voting for her in the general election: her own in-laws.
Palin was elected governor of Alaska in 2006 and she resigned part way through her term in order to run for vice president with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) on an anti-LGBTQ platform. At the time, she told voters that she had a gay friend while she backed constitutional amendments both in Alaska and at the federal level to prohibit same-sex couples from marrying. She also said that “homosexuality” is “a choice.”
Since the failed White House bid, Palin has become a rightwing media personality with frequent appearances on Fox News and announced her congressional campaign earlier this year, saying that “we need people that have cajones.”
“We got nothing to lose and no more of this vanilla milquetoast namby-pamby wussy pussy stuff that’s been going on, that’s why our country is in the mess that we’re in,” she said.
Palin got one of the top four spots in the primary yesterday and will face two Republicans – former assistant secretary for Native American affairs Tara Sweeney and political newcomer Nick Begich III – as well as Democratic former state Rep. Mary Sattler Peltola.
While she is perhaps the most famous of the four candidates who will appear on November’s ballot, she hasn’t secured everyone’s vote in the state, not even her own in-laws’, Faye and Jim Palin.
The elder Palins hosted an election eve party last night for Begich. Faye Palin said that it’s not that she doesn’t like Sarah Palin, she just “only has one vote” and it’s for Begich.
This isn’t the first time that Faye and Jim Palin have distanced themselves from their daughter-in-law. In 2008, just two months before Palin and McCain lost to Barack Obama and Joe Biden, Faye Palin told the New York Daily News that she hadn’t decided who to vote for.
“We don’t agree on everything,” Faye Palin said about Sarah Palin. “But I respect her passion…. Being pro-life is who Sarah is.”
“I’m not sure what she brings to the ticket other than she’s a woman and a conservative,” she added.
Faye Palin, Sarah’s ex-mother-in-law, tells me it’s not that she doesn’t like the mother of 5 of her grandchildren, but is voting for Nick instead because she “only has one vote”
— Nathaniel Reed (@ReedReports) August 16, 2022
