Mark Begich

Mark Begich ( born March 31, 1962 in Anchorage, Alaska ) is an American politician of the Democratic Party. Since 2009, he is one of two U.S. senators for the state of Alaska.

Life

Mark Begich grew up as the fourth of six children to Anchorage. His father, Nick Begich was one from 1971 as deputy to the U.S. House of Representatives, until he came to Alaska in a plane crash in October 1972 killed. Mark Begich was at this time ten years old. His ancestors were Serbs from Croatia.

After visiting the Steller Secondary School in Anchorage Begich took courses at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Early on, he became politically active and joined with the top 20 of the Democratic Party. In 1988 he was elected at the age of 26 years into the House of Representatives from Alaska, where he held a seat until 1998. Three of these years, he sat in front of the house as chairman, two other Vice - Chairman.

Begich suffered two electoral defeats, when he in 1994 and 2000, the election of the mayor of Anchorage. 1994 Begich defeated Republican Rick Mystrom and 2000, his party colleague George Wuerch. 2003 Begich ran again for mayor of Anchorage and scored a landslide victory in which he his challengers Mystrom ( 37%) and Wuerch (15%) clearly dissociated with 45 % of votes.

2008 Begich candidate for the Democrats for a seat in the Senate in Washington. While he was able to record 90.6 % of the vote in the primaries, the election against longtime incumbent Ted Stevens designed to be difficult. This can be most clearly read on the election result, which only two weeks after the election, mid-November 2008, it was clear. So Begich came to 47.6 % of the vote, Stevens to 46.6%. A projection of 3724 votes was enough to secure the victory Begich.

Mark Begich is married since 1990 with the entrepreneur Deborah Bonito, which is like her husband, a member of the Democratic Party. Both were 2002 parents of a son in July.