Alaska’s US Senate race has big implications both nationally and at home.
After 12 years in office, Republican US Sen. Dan Sullivan, a reliable ally of President Donald Trump, is up for reelection in what is expected to be the most serious challenge of his political career, facing former Democratic US Rep. Mary Peltola. The race is among a handful Democrats hope to flip in their mission to take control of the Senate from Republicans.
The race has gotten national attention, but Peltola’s campaign is carving a distinctly independent path to the general election that’s keeping national Democrats at arm’s length.
Following the primary election, she launched an ad pledging to “take on anyone, including Democrats, anyone in the Lower 48, who doesn’t understand what Alaska needs.” What she’s talking about, at least when it comes to national Democrats, is her friendlier stance toward resource development, especially oil projects like the Willow project.
“No two resource development projects are the same, and it’s critical that projects have social licensure to operate, but I will always defend the right of Alaskans to develop our own resources so that we can lower costs and create good-paying jobs that support Alaska families,” she said in a candidate survey by a coalition of Alaska news outlets.
Peltola has also pledged to halt or reverse many of the harshest impacts of the second Trump term, from helping fisheries and lowering escalating healthcare costs to restoring federal funding for renewable energy projects and rural radio stations.
Sullivan, for his part, has been a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump throughout his presidency, rarely voicing public pushback to the administration, whether on rising health care costs or Elon Musk’s chainsaw approach to the federal budget that had an outsized impact on Alaska. He’s also been a reliable supporter of Trump’s trade wars and war with Iran, which has sent oil prices soaring, with gasoline hitting $26 per gallon in one village.Sullivan also voiced support for cutting back on Medicaid spending—though he refuses to label the work requirements he voted for, which are expected to drive people away with paperwork, as cuts.
“I think our goal should be to increase our private sector economy,” he said when asked whether he would oppose cuts to Medicaid and Social Security, “and increase the opportunities for people to move off Medicaid and get private-sector insurance, from a stronger private sector economy.”
But Sullivan’s support for measures like the Big, Beautiful Bill, which cut Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)—-which have hit Alaska particularly hard compared to the Lower 48—may come back to haunt him.
In the open primary election, Sullivan finished with about 43% of the vote to Peltola’s 48%. While the 5-point lead could be due in part to the relatively lower turnout for primaries, it’s worth noting that Sullivan—the most vocal pro-Trump candidate on the ballot—lags behind many of the other Republicans on the ballot, including Republican US Rep. Nick Begich.
While Begich toned down some of his MAGA rhetoric once he took office, Sullivan insisted in his 2026 address to the Legislature that the challenges Alaska lawmakers face with massive cutbacks in federal spending on things like Medicaid and food stamps were not, in fact, the result of Republican policies but of the Senate’s minority Democrats.
“Now, I’m not being partisan here. These are just the facts,” Sullivan said. “And Alaskans should know who wants to help us and who wants to hurt us.”
Pointing blame at Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, he argued that it was the Democrats who blocked Republican efforts to blunt the impact of the Republican cuts to Medicaid on rural states like Alaska. Those efforts were opposed both by Democrats and conservative Republicans and were ultimately blocked on procedural grounds.
And while Peltola has her own qualms with national Democrats, she argues that the real pain has come from Trump and Republicans who favor the wealthy instead of the working class, highlighting the fact that Sullivan’s personal wealth has roughly tripled to nearly $9 million since becoming a senator.
“Dan Sullivan, every single vote, votes along with corporate greed,” she said on primary election night, according to reporting by Alaska Public Media. “He is there for every fat cat in the nation, from healthcare to fuel to groceries to transportation to heat.”
Alaska’s open primary system means that the general election ballot is currently set to be rounded out by a second Republican—also named Dan Sullivan—who finished in a distant third place in the primary, and a progressive Democrat, David Leslie, who finished in fourth place. Dan J. Sullivan, a Republican from Petersburg, has faced enormous pushback from Sen. Dan S. Sullivan and his allies, who have floated accusations of criminal wrongdoing against him.
Dan J. Sullivan won a legal challenge to stay on the ballot and said the attacks have only galvanized his decision to stay in the race , and that he ran in the first place to protest Republicans’ self-serving politics.
Several voters have also said the Republican pushback was part of the reason they voted for Dan J. Sullivan in the primary.
“I voted for Dan J. because powerful people tried to tell me I couldn’t,” wrote Connor Eshelman in a letter to the editor published in the Anchorage Daily News, saying that while he wasn’t sure about all the claims of wrongdoing, “What I know is he meets the requirements to run for Senate and declared his candidacy through proper channels. That means we should be allowed to vote for him if we so choose.”
Alaskans will decide which of the four candidates they want to represent them via the state’s ranked-choice voting system, which allows voters to rank candidates by preference. Those rankings will come into play if no candidate gets an outright majority in the first round of voting, where the worst-performing candidate will be eliminated and their votes reallocated according to those rankings in what is effectively an instant runoff.
The general election is Nov. 3.
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.
