Wrangell voters cast their ballots to re-elect Gov. Mike Dunleavy and to toss out congressional incumbents Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Rep. Mary Peltola.
While a majority of Alaskans also voted for Dunleavy, though by a slightly smaller margin than in Wrangell, the statewide count gives Murkowski and Peltola solid odds to re-election.
The Alaska Division of Elections will announce final vote counts and ranked-choice voting results on Nov. 23.
Statewide, as of Monday, Dunleavy was ahead of challengers former Anchorage Democratic state Rep. Les Gara and former Gov. Bill Walker, with 52.06% of the vote against 23.07% for Gara and 20.10% for Walker. Dunleavy will win outright if he holds more than 50% in the final count next week.
Wrangell went 56.26% for Dunleavy, 21.5% for Walker and 14.43% for Gara.
Former Kenai Peninsula Borough Charlie Pierce garnered 7.81% of the vote in Wrangell, significantly higher than the 4.55% he tallied statewide. Pierce, who resigned as mayor under pressure earlier this fall, faces a sexual harassment lawsuit from a former borough employee — the third harassment complaint against him during his time in office.
Pierce and Dunleavy both campaigned for larger Alaska Permanent Fund dividends.
In the race for U.S. Senate, Wrangell voted 50.3% for Republican challenger Kelly Tshibaka against 39.63% for Murkowski, who attended school here in the mid-1960s when her father, Frank Murkowski, managed a bank branch in town.
The Democrat in the U.S. Senate race, Pat Chesbro, placed a distant third in Wrangell, at 4.42%.
Statewide, Tshibaka held a small lead over Murkowski as of Monday, according to the Division of Elections, 44.22% to 42.84%, with more than 35,000 absentee, mail-in, early and questioned ballots still to count. The winner will be determined on Nov. 23, when the elections division removes the third-place finisher, the Democrat, from the total, assigning those ballots to voters’ second choice. Murkowski is expected to receive far more of those second-choice ballots than Tshibaka, likely giving her the victory at more than 50%.
In the race for U.S. House, Democratic incumbent Mary Peltola did much better statewide than in Wrangell. She received 47.26% of the vote statewide to 33.28% in Wrangell.
Voters here picked former Republican Gov. Sarah Palin as their top choice, with 40.03% of ballots. Palin did much worse in the statewide count at 26.57%. Third place statewide went to Republican Nick Begich, at 24.19%, similar to the 25.49% he received in Wrangell.
Under the state’s ranked-choice system, if Peltola does not pass 50% when the last votes are counted, the fourth-place finisher, Libertarian Chris Bye, will be dropped from the count, as will Begich, with ballots for those two candidates assigned to voters’ second choice, setting up a one-on-one count between Palin and Peltola. It will only take a small number of Begich voters who selected Peltola as their second choice, or who selected no one as a second pick, to give the victory to Peltola.
Wrangell, along with the North Tongass precinct in Ketchikan and the Coffman Cove precinct on Prince of Wales Island were the three biggest supporters of Tshibaka and Palin of the 10 precincts in House District 1. Dunleavy also received his biggest support in the district from those same three precincts.
In the races for state Legislature, the two incumbents representing Wrangell were ahead as of Monday and appeared headed to re-election.
State Rep. Dan Ortiz, a four-term incumbent from Ketchikan, was ahead of challenger Republic Jeremy Bynum, also of Ketchikan, 2,866 to 2,679, a lead of 187 votes with an unknown number of absentee, mail-in and questioned ballots still to count. Though the still-to-count ballots likely total several hundred, it would take a strong reversal of the in-person balloting results for Bynum to overtake Ortiz.
In Wrangell, Bynum outpolled Ortiz, an independent, 364 to 309.
Sen. Bert Stedman is the winner in the state Senate district that includes Wrangell. The Sitka Republican had 3,585 votes, 70%, as of Monday versus challenger Mike Sheldon, of Petersburg, also a Republican, with 1,482, or 29%.
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