Mary Peltola would be the first Alaska Native in Congress. Nick Begich III would follow in the footsteps of his grandfather. During a day in Kenai, they revealed insights on what motivates their bids for U.S. House.
Mary Peltola, left, and Nick Begich, both candidates for U.S. House, on the Kenai Peninsula on August 3, 2022.
For Begich, it’s the unspoken pain of his childhood that motivated a life of stability that he says he wants to bring to the state. It’s also the political legacy of the Begich name that set him on the path to run for public office, even as he tries to distance himself from his relatives’ more progressive views.
“I am Yup’ik, I am from Bethel, I am a Democrat, I’m a woman, and I want to work for everyone,” she told a crowd gathered on a lawn in Soldotna under a bright August sun. “I want to work for people of every party, of every ethnicity and religion and background and gender.” Peltola says the nation’s biggest threat is partisanship, a sentiment that reflects a lesson that she learned early in her career in the state Legislature. She was 22 years old when she first ran for state House, after growing up in villages in Western Alaska. She lost her first race by 56 votes and returned two years later to defeat the incumbent Ivan Ivan.
After high school, Peltola had attended the University of Northern Colorado with the intention of becoming a teacher. But after an internship at the Legislature, she became passionate about public policy. While Palin rides private jets and Begich self-finances his campaign to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, Peltola has had to think about whether she’ll be able to pay the bills while taking leave from her job to campaign.less than $200,000 in assets earlier this year, compared to Begich’s wealth of at least $10 million and Palin’s wealth of at least $950,000.
While Peltola, whose Yup’ik name is Akalleq, meaning “the one who rolled”, doesn’t mention that historic potential of her candidacy unless explicitly asked, her Native heritage shapes her position on some policy issues. The third Nick Begich was born in Alaska but moved away as an infant, first to Texas, then to Tennessee, back to Texas, back to Alaska, then to Denver, and finally near Orlando, Florida, with his maternal grandparents. He said he didn’t even know he was the grandson of a U.S. House member until he was in middle school.
“So it was a challenging decision, but recognizing that I was responsible for what happened next in my own life, I took what came next very seriously. College was not some party. It was about building myself up to a position where I could be successful later in life, provide the stability that I lacked for much of my own upbringing,” he said.
His wife Dharna, the daughter of immigrants from India, said that Nick’s maternal grandparents embodied her own family’s values -- “You work hard. You put your family first.” Still, Begich says that once he returned to Alaska, people immediately began asking him about his political ambitions. His campaign contributions changed too: he regularly contributed to the Alaska Republican Party from 2016 onward. In 2019, he began contributing to Don Young’s campaign. And in 2020, he contributed to Trump’s presidential campaign.
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