Mitt Romney may have carried the statewide, GOP vote in Alaska, but Rick Santorum got more Petersburg votes that any of the other three candidates. Republican Party member Jean Ellis’s bed and breakfast was the site of the Republican Presidential Preference Poll in Petersburg Tuesday.
“Turnout was very good. They sent us 85 ballots and we used 84 of them. So, 84 people turned out. The results were Rick Santorum 35, Mitt Romney 27, Newt Gingrich 15, Ron Paul 6, and undecided 1,” Ellis said.
Ellis is a retired legislative aide who is president of the local school board and a grandmother. She cast the one undecided vote in Tuesday’s poll.
Ellis said, “I think even with all the coverage out there, I have been living a life that’s been more focused on Petersburg and less focused nationally. So I haven’t really been paying that that much attention. I didn’t feel I had made my mind up enough to choose.”
Petersburg republicans also teleconferenced with the party’s district convention, where they helped choose delegates to go to the statewide convention next month. Ellis says this year’s district event was held under the state’s newly redrawn, legislative boundaries. So Petersburg republicans met with their fellow party members in Juneau instead of their old district, which they had shared with Sitka and Wrangell. Ellis noticed the difference.
“And it did feel like we’d been swallowed up. I mean I think that if we had a more active republican party here and we had really organized and decided that one of us wanted to go to the state convention. We probably could have gotten them elected but we would have had to make a real effort,” she said.
The State itself has not yet held an election under the new district lines. That won’t happen until Alaska’s August 28th primary. Meanwhile, the Republican Party will hold its statewide convention in Anchorage from April 26th to the 28th.
