{"id":1366,"date":"2026-05-11T13:43:04","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T13:43:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/edmpackz.com\/?p=1366"},"modified":"2026-05-11T13:43:04","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T13:43:04","slug":"sarah-palins-last-frontier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/edmpackz.com\/?p=1366","title":{"rendered":"Sarah Palin\u2019s Last Frontier"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Can the former governor\u2014who left Alaska for the national stage\u2014persuade the state to send her to Congress?<\/div>\n
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\"Sarah<\/picture><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
The curiosity about Palin, her potential for spectacle, brought the national press back up to Alaska.<\/span>Photograph by Mark Thiesssen \/ AP<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n
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Five days before a special election for Alaska\u2019s lone seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, I went to a strip mall in Anchorage to look for Sarah Palin. I found her campaign office inside a real-estate agency, next to a diner, in the southern part of the city. A handwritten sign on the door said \u201cbe right back,\u201d and, outside the headquarters, Kari James, a landscaper working in the dirt, told me that Jerry Ward, who was lending his space to Palin, had gone out for a sandwich. Nobody was inside.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe\u00a0Guardian<\/em>\u00a0and the\u00a0Telegraph<\/em>\u00a0already came here,\u201d James said. \u201cOne of them was writing an article about\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. keeping bathrooms separate? I told her some places she could go talk to liberals in Anchorage. The other one had already written her story\u2014she just wanted to fill in quotes. Why are so many British papers here asking about Sarah Palin?\u201d James went on, \u201cI started landscaping here yesterday, and Jerry was already telling people I\u2019ve joined the campaign. I haven\u2019t. I\u2019m just landscaping, but I love Sarah Palin.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Alaska\u2019s House seat is open for the first time in forty-nine years, after the death, in March, of Don Young\u2014the longest-serving Republican in congressional history. Palin, the state\u2019s former governor, led a field of forty-eight candidates in a June primary, and is now facing just two: the Republican businessman Nick Begich, whose grandfather formerly held the seat as a Democrat, and the Democrat Mary Peltola, a Yupik Eskimo from rural Alaska.<\/p>\n

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James moved to Alaska from Nebraska a few years ago; her family is in the military. \u201cI don\u2019t consider myself an Alaskan yet,\u201d she said. \u201cBut I am thinking about this on a national scale. We need to have our own Republican version of the Squad\u2014[Lauren] Boebert, Margie Taylor Greene, and Sarah Palin.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ward turned into the parking lot and let me come inside. A framed photo of him shaking hands with Trump was on a side table by his desk. \u201cI know Trump because of Sarah,\u201d he said. \u201cI know Sarah because she knows my kids.\u201d Ward, an Alaska Native and a former state senator, managed\u00a0Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s 2016 campaign in the state, and now runs the real-estate business with his wife. They also live there. \u201cIt\u2019s a home, a company, a veterans\u2019 talking circle, a prayer group\u2014we pray for Biden and Trump,\u201d he said. Sean Hannity was on the radio, doing a segment about Clinton\u2019s e-mails. \u201cSarah was here this morning,\u201d Ward told me. \u201cShe sits at the glass table. She was with nurses or veterans, I think. I have no idea.\u201d Hannity went to commercial break; an ad for Palin came on the air, in which she said, \u201cDon\u2019t retreat\u2014reload.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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