Mark Peter Begich ( ; born March 30, 1962) is an American politician who served as a United States senator from Alaska from 2009 to 2015. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as Mayor of Anchorage from 2003 to 2009. Born in Anchorage, Begich is the son of former U.S. Representative Nick Begich Sr. He was elected to the Anchorage Assembly at the age of 26. He eventually served as chairman for three years, before leaving the Assembly in 1998. Begich ran two unsuccessful campaigns for Mayor of Anchorage in 1994 and 2000 before being elected in 2003. He was subsequently reelected in 2006. In the 2008 Senate election, Begich narrowly defeated incumbent Ted Stevens, at the time the longest-serving Republican member of the U.S. Senate. In the 2014 Senate election, Begich was narrowly defeated in his bid for reelection by former Alaska Attorney General Dan Sullivan. Following completion of his term in the U.S. Senate, Begich started Anchorage-based consulting firm Northern Compass Group. On June 1, 2018, Begich announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for Governor of Alaska in the 2018 election, facing off against Republican nominee and former State Senator Mike Dunleavy. He lost the gubernatorial election by a margin of seven percent. Early life, education, and early political career Begich was born and raised in Anchorage, Alaska. He is the son of Margaret Jean "Pegge" (née Jendro) and former U.S. Representative Nick Begich. His father disappeared in October 1972 during a small plane flight from Anchorage to Juneau, Alaska with then U.S. House Majority Leader Hale Boggs, but was reelected the next month, while missing, before both were declared legally dead. The fourth of six children, he has two sisters and three brothers. His paternal grandparents were Croatian; his paternal grandfather, John Begich, immigrated to the United States from Croatia (then part of the empire of Austria-Hungary) in 1911. His mother had Polish, Bohemian (Czech), Dutch, and English ancestry. He attended Steller Secondary School in Anchorage. As an adolescent, he opened an 18-and-under club called "The Motherlode." At the age of 18, he had obtained a business license to sell jewelry and was helping his mother manage a number of real estate properties. Because of his business opportunities, he decided not to go to college. His mother twice ran to fill her late husband's Congressional seat in the 1980s, losing to longtime Representative