[1] Benson's running mate for governor was former state House minority leader Ethan Berkowitz; they lost in the general election to the Republican ticket of Sean Parnell and Mead Treadwell by 22% of the vote.
[2] According to Benson's official biography from her website, unlike her older brothers, she was born outside of Alaska in Yakima, Washington in 1954, while her mother was being treated for tuberculosis.
Benson grew up in southeastern Alaska in foster homes and boarding school as well as logging camps with her father and in Sitka with her grandparents.
Senator Mike Gravel to work in Washington, D.C. She was accepted to study at Stanford University but could not attend due to personal and family reasons.
In 2001 Benson made local and national news when she objected to her master's degree advisor's use of her clan (Snail House) in a controversial sexual abuse poem, Indian Girls.
Benson completed her master's in creative writing in 2002 at another campus and under the tutelage of Pulitzer Prize winner N. Scott Momaday.
Her one-woman show centering on early civil rights leader Elizabeth Peratrovich has earned Benson acclaim from Native journals and writers' groups, and was performed in Washington D.C. in March 2006 as part of the Smithsonian Institution's contribution to Women's History Month.
Benson has received recognition for her literary and public service work and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize in Poetry (2000), the Alpert Award in the Arts (2004), and a USA Fellowship (2005).
In the August 2010 primary, Benson defeated multimillionaire Jack Powers and taxi driver Lynette Moreno-Hinz to become the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor.