The candidate for the Alaska Open House has ties to New Jersey.
Dr. El Gross, who made a strong but unsuccessful bid for a seat in the U.S. Senate in Alaska in 2020, will look for a seat that remains vacant after the death of 25-term Republican Don Young on March 18 at the age of 88.
His father, Aurum Gross, grew up in South Orange and West Orange before moving to Alaska in the 1960s.
After law school, Aurum Gross got a job at the Alaska Legislature Agency – their version of the Office of Legislative Services – where he became friends with a young state legislator and a pilot named Jay Hammond.
After Hammond was elected governor in 1974 – he defeated the former Democratic governor by just 287 votes across the state – he elected Av GrossDemocrat, as Attorney General of Alaska.
Ella Grossa’s grandfather, Joel, was a lawyer in Newark and led the Essex County Joint Jewish Appeal. In 1948, when former Vice President Henry Wallace launched an independent presidential campaign, Joel Gross served as vice chairman of the newly formed Independent Progressive Party. He previously served as a member of the executive board of the Independent League of New Jersey Citizens.
His uncle, Benedict Grossprofessor of mathematics and former dean of Harvard.
Gross is an orthopedic surgeon, a commercial fisherman who became famous after he advertised how he killed a bear in self-defense.
El Gross spoke with U.S. Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan as an independent with the support of the Democratic Party of Alaska. He lost 54% -41%, despite a public opinion poll showing that the race was intense.
Alaska election officials have scheduled a primaries for June 11, and the top four voters went to the polls on August 16, which will use rating voting to elect a new member of Congress.
Gross says he will also run in the November election for a full term.
The race is already attended by 44-year-old programmer Nick Begic III, a Republican whose grandfather was Young’s predecessor.
Young won the 1973 snap election after MP Nick Begic, a Democrat, was pronounced dead.
Begic campaigned for re-election for a second term when a small plane carrying him and House Majority Leader Hale Boggs disappeared during an Alaska election campaign. The plane and the remains of the two congressmen were never found. Begic was posthumously re-elected in 1972, defeating Young by twelve percentage points.
Boggs also had ties to New Jersey. His daughter was Barbara Boggs Sigmund, former mayor of Princeton, Freeholder of Mercer County, and a candidate for governor from the Democratic Party in 1989. His grandson, Paul Sigmund, was also a freelancer of Mercer County.
Begic III is the nephew of Mark Begic, a Democrat who served one term in the U.S. Senate before Sullivan removed him from office in 2014. Another uncle is Tom Begic, a Democrat who currently serves on the Alaska Senate.
