“I hate to say this, but I think it’s very true: It’s Don Young — he speaks his mind, and sometimes he doesn’t use the most politically correct language, but I don’t see where that’s going to hurt him politically,” Halcro said. “People who like and support him figure it’s Don being Don, and those who don’t like him won’t vote for him anyway.”

Widely depicted as part of a dying breed of long-tenured Washington politicians who do and say what they want, political consequences be damned, Young has a legendarily outsized, one-of-a-kind personality.

An infamous 1994 incident in which he brandished an “oosik” — a whale penis bone — in the direction of a female U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service official, is only one example of his well-established flair for the odd and dramatic gesture or comment.

More recently, he has survived charges of corruption, including a years-long federal investigation that examined whether he accepted illegal gifts and campaign contributions from an oil services company, part of an inquiry that brought down a host of Alaska state legislators.