2010 United States gubernatorial elections candidate Kenneth Mapp, a former Lieutenant Governor of the United States Virgin Islands, in the general election on November 2, 2010. De Jongh defeated Mapp in the election. Governor Sarah Palin was elected in 2006 with 48% of the vote and was eligible to seek reelection in 2010. On July 3, 2009, Palin announced that she would not run for reelection, and resigned on July 26, 2009. On July 26, Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell became the 12th Governor of Alaska. Parnell officially announced that he would be running for a first full-term in 2010. In August 2010 he won the
Alaska Public Safety Commissioner dismissal for a time, the acting city manager, of Kenai. She had previously nominated Kopp in March 2007 to the Alaska Judicial Council, to which he was later confirmed. (He resigned on July 13, 2008.) The Alaska Judicial Council recommends judges for selection in the state. According to the "Anchorage Daily News", Kopp "was a rising star in Alaska's Christian conservative movement." In Kenai, Kopp had been previously suspended and investigated for sexual harassment of an employee. Palin said she believed, when she named him on July 11, that the investigation had cleared him, and that she learned that Kopp had