Mary Peltola and Dan Sullivan are running one of the closest Senate races in the country, which means national politics has officially remembered Alaska exists.
For the next two months, both parties will explain this election to Alaskans as if Alaskans haven’t been living it. Republicans will say Peltola is a Democrat, therefore part of the same party that occasionally looks at Alaska and sees one giant environmental permit waiting to be denied. Democrats will say Sullivan has spent twelve years in Washington helping Republicans do Republican things.
Both arguments are technically true.
Then Alaska gets involved. Once you stop talking party labels and start talking oil, fisheries and federal land, the race gets a lot harder to package. I think that’s the actual story.
PELTOLA IS A DEMOCRAT. ALASKA HAS CONDITIONS.
Peltola isn’t hiding that she’s a Democrat. But she’s spent years making national Democrats uncomfortable on the one issue where Alaska politicians eventually have to show their work: resource development.
She supported the Willow oil project when plenty of Democrats wanted it stopped. Her Senate campaign is openly calling for more oil and gas development, permitting reform, and federal support for the Alaska LNG project. That’s not the standard Democratic brochure.
Her pitch is basically: Alaska can develop its own resources without Washington explaining Alaska to Alaska. I get why that works there. Everywhere else, “protect it” is the whole argument. Up there, people also have jobs and heating bills. That complicates the bumper sticker fast.
SULLIVAN IS FIGHTING WASHINGTON FROM INSIDE WASHINGTON
Sullivan’s position is easier to explain. More drilling, more mining, fewer federal restrictions. It fits Alaska fine.
The problem is he’s been a senator since 2015. Twelve years in, running against Washington gets strange, because Washington technically includes his office now. Some of his fights against federal overreach are real. But there’s a difference between fighting the system and being paid a federal salary to fight it from inside a federal building, and voters are allowed to notice which one this actually is. That’s the opening for Peltola. She gets to run against Washington without currently living there. Convenient.
THEN THERE ARE THE FISH
This is where it gets aggressively Alaskan.
Peltola built her identity on “Fish, Family and Freedom,” and salmon decline, bycatch, and industrial trawling aren’t side issues for her — she grew up fishing the Kuskokwim. Sullivan knows exactly how dangerous that is to ignore, which is probably why he introduced a Bycatch Reduction Act in June aimed at cutting salmon bycatch and requiring better monitoring tech.
Peltola pushes harder against factory trawlers and frames it as outsiders taking Alaska’s fish. Sullivan argues better rules and technology fix it without picking a fight with the industry. Different approaches, same conclusion: this Senate race is partly a competition over who saves more salmon. That’s about as Alaska as an election gets without requiring snowmobiles.
THIS RACE IS ACTUALLY CLOSE
This would matter less if Sullivan were up twenty points. He isn’t.
Peltola finished first in the August top-four primary with roughly 48%. A post-primary Alaska Survey Research poll had her at 51%, Sullivan at 49%. She also outraised him badly in Q2 — about $6.9 million to his $2 million. Republicans can’t wave this off as another national Democratic fantasy where consultants insist Alaska is “in play” for eight months before discovering Republicans still live there.
Peltola can win this. Sullivan can win this. And because Alaska apparently decided the race wasn’t confusing enough, another candidate named Daniel Sullivan also made the ballot. There are now enough Sullivans in this race that I’d want the ballot instructions notarized. Hahaha.
THE REAL ARGUMENT IS WHO GETS TO TELL WASHINGTON TO SHUT UP
I don’t think this is oil versus no oil. Both candidates support development. Both talk about fisheries. Both complain about federal interference. The disagreement is over who Alaskans trust to actually do it.
Sullivan says Republicans will get Washington out of the way. Peltola says she’ll tell Democrats no when Alaska needs something. That’s a more interesting race than either party wants to sell you.
Because Alaska has spent decades perfecting a stance that sounds contradictory everywhere else and makes total sense there: Washington should stop controlling us. Washington should also send infrastructure money, military spending, and broadband funding. Then Washington should leave immediately.
I used to think that was just hypocrisy with good PR. I don’t anymore. It’s basically state policy, and honestly, I’m not sure Alaska’s wrong to want it both ways — I complain about my landlord and still expect him to fix the heat.
EVERYBODY STINKS. RANK ACCORDINGLY.
By November, Republicans will have spent months trying to make Peltola a generic national Democrat. Democrats will have spent months trying to make Sullivan a generic Washington Republican. Alaska will probably ignore both efforts, keep talking fish and drilling, and send one of them to Washington — where they will immediately start complaining about Washington.
That’s the Great Alaskan Slip ‘n Slide. Everybody’s covered in oil. Everybody’s yelling about fish. Washington is somehow both the villain and the paycheck.
So here’s what I’d actually ask an Alaskan before November: if the senator you send to Washington is going to take the federal money either way, does it matter more to you who fights Washington from inside it, or who at least has the decency to fight it from the outside first?