Alaska's Nick Begich III: Hardest Working Member of Congress

There has been an uncharacteristically large amount of attention paid to Alaska this election cycle, and with the allegations being hurled at the Senate campaign of Mary Peltola, that's perfectly justified. Her campaign has, after all, tried to cast her as some great warrior against rigged elections, while working busily behind the scenes to rig the Senate election.

But there's a brighter spot in Alaska politics this year, and it's not in the Senate, but in the House of Representatives, where our sole at-large Republican Rep. Nick Begich III (AK — At large) may well be, as The Alaska Story's Suzanne Downing informs us, the hardest-working member of Congress right now.

Congressman Nick Begich is building a first-term record on two fronts: casting votes and getting legislation signed into law.

It’s a remarkable difference between him and his predecessor, Mary Peltola. During her time in Congress, she missed 235 of 1,370 roll-call votes, roughly one in every six. Peltola’s 17.2% missed-vote rate was about 19 times Begich’s rate of 0.9%. For a state with just one representative in the House, those absences meant Alaska frequently had no vote recorded through its sole member, when Peltola was in office.

The Alaska Republican has the lowest missed-vote rate of any representative to hold Alaska’s at-large House seat since statehood, according to a comparison of career voting records compiled from GovTrack. And with his seventh sponsored measure now signed into law, he has surpassed a freshman lawmaking benchmark identified by congressional researchers as the best in at least 50 years.

The latest addition is the Southcentral Foundation Land Transfer Act, which President Donald Trump signed Oct. 20. The legislation clears the way for expanded behavioral health facilities in Anchorage.

Suzanne lays out the numbers for us. The missed-vote rates of every one of Alaska's at-large representatives, since statehood, are telling; Nick has a missed vote rate of under one percent. His predecessor, the now-infamous Mary Peltola, missed 17.2 percent of votes. Although, the champion vote-misser was Howard Pollock, who served from 1967 to 1971, who missed 27.5 percent. What's more, Rep. Begich has had seven sponsored measures passed and signed into law, whereas Mary Peltola, during her brief tenure in the House, had none. Not one. Zip. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

Even with ranked choice voting in play, it also looks like Congressman Begich is a shoo-in for reelection. That, at least, is one race that we don't have to worry about too much, and it's good to see this kind of performance rewarded with the confidence of Alaska voters.

Here's the thing: Rep. Begich is the kind of representative that America needs more of. He's not spending time seeking out news cameras, like so many of his colleagues, especially on the Democrat side; it's probably that the most dangerous place one can be inside the Beltway is between a politician and a camera. No, Rep. Begich is just in there getting the job done, taking care of the business that Alaska elected him to do, and boy, howdy, he's getting it done, more and faster than any Alaska representative before him, more and faster than some people who have been in Congress for decades.

That's a pretty fine record, and a vote for Nick Begich III is a vote we can cast in confidence.

Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.

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