President Donald Trump says he’s coming to Alaska again — but this time he won’t be rolling out the red carpet for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday, Trump said he plans to visit Alaska in the final 30 days before the Nov. 3 election to stump for endangered Republican US Sen. Dan Sullivan. Sullivan finished last month’s top-four primary trailing Democratic challenger Mary Peltola by more than 8 points, 49.5% to 41.4%.
But while the results suggest a seat that could decide control of the Senate is in play, Trump spent much of his time attacking another Republican in the race: a Petersburg man named Dan J. Sullivan.
“It’s close for one reason,” Trump said about the race, according to reporting by USA Today, “they have a phony Dan Sullivan. So I will go to Alaska to make sure that a great senator gets re-elected… I’m going to be going the last 30 days before the election.”
The other Dan Sullivan
Sen. Sullivan and fellow Republicans have long accused Dan J. Sullivan of being a decoy candidate designed to confuse voters, but no evidence has emerged to support those claims. Dan J. Sullivan has said running was his own idea, and his federal campaign finance filings show no money from super PACs or political parties.
“And he was put up by the Democrats, and they don’t admit it, but it’s been so proven,” Trump added, claiming that Dan J. Sullivan has “never voted.”
The claim is false. The Anchorage Press reporting obtained his voting record and reported today that he has voted more than 30 times since 2000, missing just one general election in that span. Dan J. Sullivan, who said he was out picking mushrooms when Trump made the remarks, told Alaska Public Media he is a “very faithful voter.”
The lack of evidence didn’t stop Alaska’s Republican-led Division of Elections from taking the unprecedented step of kicking Dan J. Sullivan off the primary ballot.
The Alaska Supreme Court reversed that decision in June, ruling that the state had no legal mechanism to remove someone from the ballot — even if the state could prove he was a decoy.
In response, the Division of Elections—still maintaining that Dan J. Sullivan is running as a decoy—then labeled Sen. Sullivan as the “incumbent” on the ballot and listed Dan J. Sullivan as “Daniel J. Sullivan, Jr.” without a party affiliation.
Dan J. Sullivan didn’t challenge that in court, saying that if they really wanted to avoid confusion, that was one way to do it.
What the numbers actually say
The primary election results also show little evidence that Dan J. Sullivan was as much of a drag on Sen. Sullivan as Trump claimed.
Dan J. Sullivan got 2.5% of the vote. Even if every one of those votes had gone to the senator, he still would have lost to Pelota — just by a narrower margin.
If anything, the GOP’s campaign against him appears to have backfired, elevating Dan J. Sullivan’s image as a regular Alaskan — a retired teacher from Petersburg who says he’s fed up with congressional Republicans’ self-dealing — who was treated unfairly.
An Anchorage Press analysis of precinct results found that he received a large share of his support from progressive-leaning parts of the state, and some voters told the Press that the GOP’s attempts to prevent them from voting for Dan J. Sullivan are precisely why they voted for him.
The bigger lesson from the primary may be that going all-in on Trump when Trump isn’t on the ballot isn’t great politics. Republican US Rep. Nick Begich, who has quietly distanced himself from Trump this year, finished his primary with roughly 4,000 more votes than Sullivan received, putting him in a safer position heading into November.
An Alaska Survey Research poll taken in early August found Peltola and Sullivan nearly tied once the ranked-choice math plays out, 50.8% to 49.2%—a much closer race than the primary made it look.
Sullivan, meanwhile, rarely breaks with Trump. He’s repeatedly blamed rising costs and looming cuts to federal spending in Alaska not on Trump’s policies but on Senate Democrats. Trump’s presence in the final days of the race may serve as a reminder of the painful impacts on Alaska, which lost 10% of its federal workforce in 2025.
Then there’s heating oil
And as one commenter on Reddit noted, Trump’s visit to Alaska in October will align neatly with when people will be getting sticker shock from their first heating oil deliveries heading into the winter.
As of Thursday, heating oil in Fairbanks was selling for more than $5.60 a gallon, having just experienced a 30-cent spike with new fighting in Iran. Nationally, benchmark heating oil prices are hovering near record highs—roughly double what they were a year ago.
The Fairbanks price is up from about $4.30 when Trump took office.
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Bluesky.
