Midterm Memo: Palin raises money for Trump while seeking open Alaska House seat

The former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican nominee for vice president is tight with Trump. And close political allies, such as Palin and the 45th president, often do favors for each other — particularly the kind that involves resource accumulation. In that regard, there’s nothing unusual or, really, newsworthy about Palin signing email fundraising appeals for Save America, Trump’s political action committee, and Make America Great Again PAC, his affiliated super PAC.

But Palin, 58, is in the middle of a heated congressional bid. And while there is nothing wrong with scratching Trump’s back after he scratched hers with a crucial endorsement in the special election to replace the late Rep. Don Young (R-AK), Palin risks undermining a key component of her campaign’s message — that she is running to represent Alaska in the House, not to resuscitate her flagging standing as a prominent national political figure.

Here’s Palin’s pitch, courtesy of a campaign radio advertisement publicized in mid-May: “I’m in this for the long haul,” she says in the spot. “I’m not here to climb some political ladder the way that career politicians do. I’m going to see this thing through and earn your support.”

This might sound like standard political speak. But whether Alaska voters buy this specific claim from Palin gets to the heart of the challenge she faces with mail-in ballots already being cast in the June 11 special GOP primary.

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Standing in the way of Palin’s success in this campaign are residual hurt feelings that exist from her decision to resign as governor in the middle of her single four-year term. Fair or unfair, voters interpreted the move as Palin choosing to abandon her parochial duties as their elected chief executive to pursue fame and fortune in the lower 48, how residents of the Last Frontier often refer to the continental United States.

Polling from early May tells the tale.

Preeminent Alaska pollster Ivan Moore tested the range of candidates running to succeed Young, who died in March. Palin led the field, with 19% saying they would vote for her, but her positive-negative ratings were upside down: She tallied 36% positive, 59% negative, and just 4% who had no opinion. Compare that to fellow Republican Nick Begich III, who trailed Palin in the horse race with 16% but who polled at 42% positive, 41% negative, and 14% having no opinion — room to grow.

And that’s not Palin’s only problem.

This year, Alaska shifted to all-party primaries and ranked-choice voting courtesy of a voter initiative approved by voters in 2020 (the same voters that delivered Trump 52.8% of their vote versus now-President Joe Biden.)

Under the new rules, the top four finishers in the special open primary will advance to the Aug. 16 special general election. According to the findings from Moore’s poll, Palin advanced to the August general election but was eliminated by ranked-choice voting in four different scenarios he tested. Begich won each and every time. Incidentally, his grandfather, Nick Begich Sr., a Democrat who died in office in a plane crash, held Alaska’s lone at-large House seat prior to Young’s 49-year reign.

Palin’s House bid marks her first Alaska-centric campaign since she won the governor’s mansion in 2006. Palin last appeared on a ballot in the state in 2008, competing then as the GOP vice presidential nominee. Meanwhile, a U.S. district judge denied Palin’s request Wednesday for a new trial in her defamation case against the New York Times. The former Alaska governor sued the newspaper over a 2017 staff editorial, but a jury ruled against her.

The Palin campaign did not respond to a request for comment submitted through its website.

Now, to the field …

Nevada Senate race. Don’t look now, but there could be an upset brewing in the race for the Republican nomination for Senate in Nevada. Former state Attorney General Adam Laxalt is the consensus Republican pick to challenge Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto in November. And by consensus, I mean he has endorsements from bitter foes Trump and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

But upstart Republican Sam Brown, an Afghanistan War combat veteran, is starting to make things interesting. As NBC News reports, Brown’s fundraising is surging, and he has won three recent straw polls, indicating that he has grassroots energy behind him.

Some Republican activists in the state now believe Brown has a shot in the June 14 primary. Not so fast, say Laxalt’s Republican supporters. They are confidently predicting that the former attorney general will win the GOP Senate nod. And for what it’s worth, smart Republican insiders in Nevada agree, saying Brown is making this contest closer than it needed to be but that ultimately, Laxalt will finish on top.

Wyoming at large. It’s now or never for Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY). The embattled congresswoman filed for reelection last week, choosing to go up against Republican Harriet Hageman, who has been endorsed by Trump, in Wyoming’s Aug. 16 GOP primary despite the long odds. In the aftermath of Trump making unsupported claims that the 2020 election was stolen, Cheney has positioned herself as the leading Republican critic of the former president.

Indeed, she ratcheted up her quixotic effort to expunge Trump from the party following the Jan. 6 ransacking of the U.S. Capitol. That did not go over well with Trump nor, by extension, his supporters in Wyoming, an overwhelmingly conservative state that delivered nearly 70% of its vote to him versus Biden. On the Saturday before Memorial Day, Trump took his bid to oust Cheney to Casper, Wyoming, where he rallied for Hageman (and harangued the incumbent congressman) with the help of several out-of-state Republicans, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California and Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, among others.

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Pennsylvania Senate race. More than two weeks after the May 17 Republican Senate primary in Pennsylvania, the final vote count, and the winner, are still mysteries. Nonetheless, acting state Secretary of State Leigh M. Chapman ordered a recount. With Dr. Mehmet Oz, a famous heart surgeon and television personality, leading former hedge fund executive David McCormick by a mere 902 votes as of late last week with possibly thousands of mail-in, absentee, military and overseas ballots left to count, an automatic recount under state law was surely in the cards.

But as a senior McCormick campaign official noted Tuesday in a press conference call with reporters, “we’re doing a recount of a count that I don’t actually know the results of.” The Pennsylvania Department of State did not respond to inquiries from the Washington Examiner attempting to figure out exactly where this race stands. But here’s what Oz and McCormick are up to as the recount, due to wrap up June 8, proceeds: Oz, who appears better positioned to win the nomination than McCormick by the time all votes are counted, has declared himself the “presumptive nominee” and is patiently waiting for the process to play out.

McCormick is asking the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania, the state’s main appellate court, to 1. compel counties to include in their tallies all mail-in ballots that were missing a handwritten date on the exterior envelope (but that were stamped as received on time) and 2. initiate a hand recount in 12 counties where the undervote, Republican ballots that did not register a vote in the Senate race, exceeded statistical norms.