Democrat Mary Peltola not only finished Alaska’s open primary election with nearly a majority of the vote, but she’ll be heading into the general election without having to worry about splitting the vote with another Democrat.
US Sen. Dan Sullivan’s path to reelection, meanwhile, got a little more complicated.
The Alaska Division of Elections finalized the primary election results on Monday, cementing a strong finish for Peltola with 49.5% of the vote to Sullivan’s 41.4% and buoying Democrats’ hopes of winning the seat. If Peltola were to win, it’d be the first time Alaska had a Democratic US Senator since Sullivan unseated Mark Begich in 2014.
Peltola also got some welcome news with Monday’s withdrawal deadline.
Fourth-place finisher, progressive Democrat David Leslie, dropped out of the race. While Peltola’s performance in the primary was strong, the general election is expected to be far closer, and the 1.1% of the vote he received raised concerns that he could undercut Peltola.
While Alaska’s general elections are conducted under ranked-choice voting, analysts have been concerned that voters may not follow through on ranking like-minded candidates. And in what could end up being a razor-close election, Leslie faced pressure to drop out.
“There was much pressure from not just the Alaska Democratic leadership, but many different institutions of power,” he told the Anchorage Daily News on Monday, noting that he would offer a longer explanation later.
Leslie’s exit means the ballot will be rounded out by fifth-place primary finisher Republican Gerald Heikes, a perennial candidate from Alaska who identifies as a “constitutional Christian conservative” and supports a total ban on abortions. Heikes has long run for office in Alaska, typically garnering between 1% and 3% of the vote in Republican primary elections.
Meanwhile, the third-place finisher, a Petersburg man named Dan J. Sullivan, confirmed on Monday that he will be staying in the race. He won a legal fight to stay on the ballot in the face of Republican accusations that he was running as an insincere decoy. On Monday, he said he decided to stay in the race after the treatment from election officials, which included their removing his party affiliation—Republican—from the ballot.
“In the 3 months that I have been in this campaign, I have encountered obstacles that no other candidate in any of the other races has faced,” he said in a prepared statement. “Every time I took one step forward, roadblocks put me three steps back. It has been a time of extreme highs and lows. But with the support of family, friends and donors, I have persevered to this point. So, I am going to keep going and amplify the message that we need a different path forward.”
Republican fears that Daniel J. Sullivan would steal votes from Sen. Sullivan appear largely unfounded, with a post-election analysis showing that much of his support came from Democrat-leaning areas. Some voters have even come forward to say they were motivated to vote for him because of the barriers Alaska’s Republican-run Division of Elections put in his way.
“I voted for him in the primary,” said Connor Eshleman in a letter to the editor published in the Anchorage Daily News. “Not because I thought he could win or would be a good senator, but to send a message that if someone can run and wants to run, they should be able to, regardless of age, race, sex or, yes, even name.”
Alaska’s US Senate race has been steadily moving in favor of the Democrats. The Cook Political Report moved the race into the toss-up category after the primary election, and the latest round of news was enough to move the race into the “Tilt D” category on VoteHub.
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.
