Sarah Palin Could Be a Harbinger
The spiritual grandmother of Trumpism might be foreshadowing its fate
It once seemed mathematically impossible that a Democrat could win a state that Trump won by 10 points. But last Wednesday, that’s exactly what happened in the state of Alaska. In a special election to replace the late Republican congressman Don Young, Democrat Mary Peltola beat Republicans Nick Begich III and Sarah Palin—the former governor of Alaska and onetime GOP vice-presidential nominee—and will now serve out the rest of Young’s term. The three candidates will again duke it out for the traditionally red congressional seat in November. In the meantime, Cook Political Report has moved its rating of that seat from “Likely R” to “Toss Up.”
Some Republicans, like Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, have been quick to blame Alaska’s new ranked-choice voting system for the upset. It’s a ridiculous excuse; ranked ballots ostensibly worked in the party’s favor by not completely splitting the GOP vote between its two candidates. Republicans had the edge, and it wasn’t enough.
But Sarah Palin isn’t just any Republican. Her style-over-substance, shoot-from-the-hip, tell-it-like-it-is, you-betcha attitude helped create the atmosphere necessary for Trump to snatch the GOP nomination from less reality-telegenic candidates in 2016. You could even say Palin is the spiritual grandmother of Trumpism.
As a kind of proto-Trump, Palin’s campaign’s struggle is interesting to consider as a potential national indicator. But what does Palin’s special-election loss mean? And is this election in Alaska some kind of aberration, or is it a harbinger of things to come for Trumpism?
Sure, it’s possible that Alaskans are just sick of Sarah Palin. She abandoned them, leaving her governorship with a year left on her term under a cloud of ethics complaints. She bought a house in Arizona and had middling success at becoming a reality-television star. None of this seemed to work in Palin’s favor; in July, an Alaska Survey Research poll found her to have a positive–negative rating of 31–61 among the state’s registered voters. Maybe Alaska didn’t want its prodigal daughter to return.
There’s also the matter of bodily autonomy. Despite many pundits playing down the importance of Roe v. Wade, voters seem unhappy about losing a right they’d had for 49 years. Since Friday, June 24, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe with the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, there have been five congressional special elections. In every single one of these, the Republican candidate has underperformed against the partisan lean of his or her district.
Then there’s the other strike against Palin: She’s a lot like Trump. She’s bombastic, divisive, sloppy with facts, and proud of her ignorance. Also like Trump, she's faced low favorability numbers, at least in her home state. Palin even has five children, just like Trump, one of whom has found fame on the reality show Dancing With the Stars. The Palin family walked so the Trump family could run.
It probably doesn’t help that Trump seems to feel an affinity with Palin, or that the sentiment appears to go both ways. In July, Trump even schlepped all the way up to Anchorage to campaign for Palin and against incumbent GOP Senator Lisa Murkowski. “It’s no longer Democrat versus Republican,” Palin told the crowd of more than 5,000 Trump supporters gathered at the Alaska Airlines Center. “This is all about control versus freedom … It’s good versus evil. It is a spiritual battle.” A few weeks later, on the same day the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago, Trump participated in a tele-rally for Palin.
Many Republicans presumed that after last week’s defeat, one of the two Republicans would drop out so that the one Republican left could focus on beating the Democrat and Republicans could take back the seat in November. But neither Palin nor Nick Begich has any such plan.
In case there was any doubt, Palin held a press conference outside her Wasilla, Alaska, home on Labor Day and told reporters that it made “no sense” for her to drop out of November’s race. She added that, if Begich doesn’t withdraw, “then you’ll be able to see us not just talking the talk but walking the walk that we’ve not yet begun to fight.” This is pretty much the kind of word salad ridiculous Trump regularly produces, and the me-first move seems exactly like what Trump would do if he were in the same situation.
The GOP base was excited by Palin in 2008 because she got liberals so agitated. How they feel now is less clear. Alaska is a strange state with a fondness for nepotism, but also for nonconformists. Murkowski herself survived by not toeing the GOP line in 2010, and likely will again in 2022. At this stage in the game, one should not overinterpret Palin’s loss. But it is possible that the ignorant outsider who prepared the way for the ascent of Trump may be foreshadowing his decline.