Inside The Republican Fight To Hold Alaska

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Donald Trump won Alaska by 13 points in the 2024 presidential election. That same election, Democrat Mary Peltola lost her congressional seat to a Republican. Just two years later, Peltola is neck-and-neck against a Republican incumbent, turning one of Trump’s strongest states into an unexpected Senate battleground. 

That’s why Vice President JD Vance spent all of Monday on Air Force Two, flying over 3,000 miles from Washington to Anchorage with his wife, daughter, and 11-week-old baby. A Peltola victory over Dan Sullivan would give Democrats one of the four Senate seats they need to take back the majority. That makes Alaska a crucial part of Democrats’ bid to take back the Senate. 

“We’re going to Alaska and campaigning for Dan Sullivan,” Vance told reporters before he embarked on the eight-hour flight up to the Subarctic North. He described Sullivan as “a really great guy, a Marine Corps veteran, and just somebody we really need to keep in the United States Senate.”

JD Vance boards Air Force Two as he heads to Alaska with his wife, Second Lady Usha Vance, his daughter Mirabel, and his son, Alec. Photo: Mary Margaret Olohan for The Daily Wire.

Alaska can’t be measured by the usual political standards, locals and strategists explained to The Daily Wire. The state’s politics are shaped by unique demographics and geography, the existence of ranked-choice voting, and Alaskan priorities — which aren’t always the same as their fellow Americans below the Canadian border. Nearly 380,000, or 60%, of Alaska’s voters are registered as “nonpartisan” or “undeclared.”

Just because a president won the state, that doesn’t mean he’s secured it in the next election. Vance’s trip offers a window into how Republicans are fighting to hold Alaska: by mobilizing voters who helped secure Trump’s victory in 2024, by tying Peltola to her radical Democrat colleagues, and by making the case that Alaskans need Sullivan in Washington to continue delivering real results for the state. 

“In very deep red years, Alaska is competitive. In very deep blue years, Alaska is still competitive,” Vance said. “So I think it’s just a reality of the politics of the state. They obviously have the kind of weird ranked-choice voting system that I don’t fully understand.” 

“But I think that whether this was going to be a blue wave or a red wave year, you’re going to have a competitive Senate race in Alaska,” he added. “That’s been true historically, and I suspect it’s going to be true this year too.”

Daily Wire White House Correspondent Mary Margaret Olohan listens as Vice President JD Vance speaks to reporters at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland.  (Photo by Jacquelyn Martin – Pool/Getty Images) 

During the 2024 election cycle, Peltola was running for re-election in the House against Nick Begich. An illustration of Alaska’s sometimes bizarre politics, Begich is a Republican who came from one of the most Democrat-aligned families in Alaska. His uncle, for example, is Mark Begich, the last Alaska Democrat to hold a seat in the Senate, before he was defeated by Sullivan.

Begich is running for reelection, with polls showing him leading independent candidate Bill Hill, with the latest New York Times/Siena survey showing Begich ahead 53% to 47%. Though he’s feeling pretty confident, he told The Daily Wire that “every vote counts.” But Peltola, who he just defeated last cycle, is locked in a much closer and competitive race against Sullivan, with the RealClearPolitics average giving Peltola about a two-point edge on Sullivan.

“Alaska’s Senate race could determine the control of the United States Senate, and so there’s a lot on the line for Alaska,” Begich said. “I think Alaskans are increasingly aware of that, based on the data that we see and based on what we’re hearing on the ground.” 

He says Alaskans have a Right-leaning, independent streak. So that message he has been communicating is the same, no matter where they happen to sit on the political spectrum: “It’s Alaska first, Alaska resources finally unlocked for the benefit of the people of Alaska, and a greater national role for Alaska.”

Air Force Two lands in Anchorage, Alaska at Elmendorf Air Force Base. Photo: Mary Margaret Olohan for The Daily Wire.

“While Alaskans register as either nonpartisan or undeclared, each individual voter tends to have a Right- or Left-leaning pre-condition, and so the voter registration in Alaska isn’t necessarily representative of the electorate as a whole,” he added. “Historically, we have been a red state, and we tend to vote for Republicans because we have an independent streak.”

Both sides are pouring money into the state, though Republicans appear to be spending more. According to AdImpact, as of late September, Republicans had reserved $45 million in ads between August 1 and Election Day, while Democrats were set to spend $32 million. 

That deluge of political messaging on YouTube, TV, radio, and in the mail might be causing some voters to check out, according to Suzanne Downing, a leading conservative writer in Alaska. 

“We’re seeing more money spent this year than we’ve ever seen in the Senate race,” Downing explained to The Daily Wire. “We’ve never seen this kind of money spent.”

“People are getting worn out by the advertising,” she added. “I live in the kind of town where we don’t have mail service at our houses. We have to go to the post office. Everybody goes to the post office, checks their box for mail, and then I go and I look in the garbage can, and this thing is overflowing with flyers.” 

She believes it is impacting men, specifically. 

“Our working-class men, the guys who are on the backhoes driving the side-tilt dump trucks, the people who are building the runways or stringing the power lines out on fishing boats, they are sick of the drama, and it’s driving them away from wanting to participate,” she warned. “They are checking out. They’re emotionally disengaging from the election process because they just feel like it’s all just some sort of big game to people, and they don’t want to take part in it.” 

Suzanne Downing catches a ride to JD Vance’s rally in Fairbanks aboard Air Force Two. Photo credit: Suzanne Downing.

Nate Adams, a campaign spokesman for Dan Sullivan, noted that turnout is usually lower in midterm election years compared to the presidential election years. But he predicts that this race will have more turnout than a typical election year. 

“If you look at how many people turned out in our open primary in August, it’s clear that more people are paying attention than a typical midterm year,” he said. “That electorate skewed pretty heavily Democratic. I think Democrats in the state and across the country are very ginned up and motivated to turn out to the polls, whereas I think a lot of Republican voters were out and about enjoying the Alaskan summer, working, busy with family, jobs.” 

“Naturally, these voters typically show up in larger numbers in the November election … we’ve always placed a very strong emphasis on making sure that people know there’s an election on, and making sure our voters show up and get out,” Adams added. “Certainly on election day, but even returning absentee ballots or voting early in person — that’s been a focus of Senator Sullivan’s previous campaigns. That’ll certainly be a focus of this one as well.”

During the summer, many Alaskans are out digging in the soil, building roads, fishing, mining, repairing dikes along the rivers to prevent flooding, and building houses. The men are out working on equipment, fishing in the Bering Sea or Southeast Alaska, Downing explained. They may live in Juneau on one side of the state, but they are fishing across the Gulf of Alaska in Dillingham. 

“Voting is hard for them,” she said. Voting absentee is logistically hard too, and she argued that they are not confident an absentee ballot will be counted. But the race may go to whichever candidate can get to those voters and get them absentee ballots, she suggests — and Downing says the undeclared or nonpartisan population, very much swing votes, tend to swing Republican. 

Vice President JD Vance speaks to American troops at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, Alaska. Photo: Mary Margaret Olohan for The Daily Wire.

“Our primary may have skewed a little bit toward the feminine side because our women are not working in ‘man camps,’” she said, jokingly referring to worker camps. “Our women aren’t necessarily always out on fishing boats. A lot of our women who work, they work in offices, or they work in cities or towns running things, and for them, all they have to do is go across the street to the school and vote, or to the city office and vote.” 

There were certainly plenty of Alaskan men gathered in Fairbanks on Monday evening when Vance took the stage from a hangar at Fairbanks International Airport. Fairbanks is both the political and economic center of Interior Alaska, an area where there is strong conservative support. 

The crowd was heavily male, and the attendees nodded along somewhat solemnly to the classic rock and country songs that filled the air as they waited for Vance. A black hawk helicopter flanked the crowd on either side, and the rally signage read: “Defend Our Future.” 

David Long, a Fairbanks resident who attended the rally with his wife, told The Daily Wire that there was “huge enthusiasm” for Vance. It had been 54 years since a vice president visited Fairbanks — not since 1972, when Spiro Agnew traveled to the town to stump for the Trans Alaska Oil Pipeline, Long noted.

“Friends showed up that never come to regular political rallies,” said Long, the general manager of a Fairbanks-based construction company. “They were stoked. Some people had diabetes and had to ask special permission from the Secret Service to bring in stuff. People showed up who had never been to a political rally before. People asked special permission to get time off from work to be there three hours early.”

Sullivan spoke before the vice president, acknowledging the challenges facing Alaskans. But he reminded the attendees how Democrat policies had negatively affected them in the past, and he pointed to the wins of President Donald Trump’s administration. And he repeatedly hit at Peltola for failing to vote, leading the crowd in chants of, “No Show Peltola.” 

But it was Vance who aggressively went after the Democrat candidate, hitting her on immigration, defunding the police, men in women’s sports, and more. Earlier that day, he had told The Daily Wire that Peltola, like many other candidates, had realized that “the woke era, all the crazy stuff the Democrats had to say and do from 2018 to 2022, the voters don’t like it.” 

JD Vance and his family arrive in Alaska. Photo: Mary Margaret Olohan for The Daily Wire.

“So now they’re actually confronting voters and they’re trying to run away from their record,” the vice president told The Daily Wire ahead of his speech. “And I would just say to Alaska voters, don’t judge Mary by what she’s saying in the final six weeks of a Senate campaign. You got to judge her by what she actually did. And the reality is that she did support a lot of radical Democrat policies, including men in women’s sports. When her voting record was on the line, what she did is that she supported radical Left policies.” 

Vance hit Peltola for failing to pass legislation during her time in Congress, and for siding with the far Left when she did. He accused her of voting to keep the southern border wide open, endangering American communities through illegal criminals and fentanyl and drugs entering American communities. He accused her of voting in favor of allowing noncitizens to participate in American elections, of spending nearly $200,000 on hotels, DoorDash, and related expenses, and of failing to deliver real results for Alaska fishermen. 

The vice president also accused her of voting against her own legislation opposing Biden administration restrictions on oil and gas after pressure from Democrat leadership, putting the Democratic Party ahead of Alaskan energy interests. Peltola is a “servant of the far Left,” Vance said.

“When the far-Left calls, Mary answers. She does exactly what they tell her to do,” he said. 

U.S. Vice President JD Vance arrives for a campaign rally at Fairbanks International Airport on October 5, 2026 in Fairbanks, Alaska. (Photo by Jacquelyn Martin – Pool/Getty Images)

Perhaps most notably, Vance told the Alaskans gathered in Fairbanks on Monday night that Democrats are obsessed with Alaska this cycle. 

“AOC and Kamala Harris and the rest of them, they see the last frontier as their last best hope to take America in a far-left direction to impeach Donald J. Trump, to turn off the energy projects that we’re building all across the state, and to throttle this state and this country’s incredible progress,” he warned. 

That’s a message that national Republicans were quick to back up. 

“The Last Frontier is America’s firewall against Democrats taking control in Washington,” RNC spokesman Nick Poche told The Daily Wire. “Democrats are terminally infected with Trump Derangement Syndrome, and they are rabidly desperate to shut down energy in Alaska no matter the cost.”

Sullivan’s team believes that there is a very real chance that Alaska is the 51st seat that maintains a Republican Senate majority. Winning Alaska is absolutely a priority for Republicans across the country, particularly for Dan Sullivan himself, who labeled Alaska “the firewall of freedom.” 

“Democrats and Senator Chuck Schumer have said for the better part of a year that Alaska is a key part,” Adams, the Sullivan spokesman, explained. “It is pivotal to them flipping the Senate blue.” 

“He firmly believes that making sure we have strong representation in the Senate is good not only for Alaska but for the whole of the nation,” Adams said, “and I think Republicans across the country recognize that as well.” 

JD Vance and Dan Sullivan speak to reporters ahead of Vance’s return to Washington, D.C. Photo: Mary Margaret Olohan for The Daily Wire.

Sullivan’s wife recently took to TV to urge Alaskans to vote for her husband, drawing on her own deep Alaska Native roots and their own life in the state. She also defended him from some of the attacks from the Peltola campaign, which have grown increasingly aggressive as of late. 

“The senator and our campaign have long said that when you don’t have a record to run on, you have to make up lies about someone else’s,” Adams told The Daily Wire. “That is clearly what is going on … To the extent that she does have a record, it’s terrible, voting time and time again against Alaska’s interests, against Alaska jobs, against Alaskans keeping more of their hard-earned money, and siding overwhelmingly when it mattered most with Democrats in D.C.” 

A spokesperson for Peltola told The Daily Wire that she is focused on “lowering costs, fixing the rigged system in DC, and putting Alaska first,” arguing that Sullivan is feeling “the fallout of his price-hiking policies and support for the war in Iran.

“Alaskans won’t be fooled by Sullivan’s lies about Mary’s record because they know she will work with anyone – no matter who is in the White House – to deliver for Alaska, and that’s why Alaskans will hold Dan Sullivan accountable for his failed policies this November,” her spokesman added.

Her campaign pushed back on a number of Vance’s claims, arguing that Peltola has been described as “one of the least loyal Democrats in the House.” The Peltola campaign argues that she stood up to the Democratic Party on immigration and fought for more border funding, insisting she has a “strong record of standing with Alaska cops, first responders, and tribal law enforcement.”

Though Peltola voted against the “Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2023” — legislation prohibiting school athletic programs from allowing boys who identify as girls to play in girls’ sports — her campaign told The Daily Wire that it is “categorically false” that she opposes men in women’s sports.

Sullivan’s team views Peltola as someone running a social media campaign, not a candidate who is getting out and meeting with voters. Adams credited her social media effort for making it seem like she’s meeting people in real life. 

He pointed to a recent New York Times story on Peltola that detailed allegations from nine of her former employees, describing her alleged outbursts, mistreatment, derogatory slurs, as well as high staff turnover. Peltola’s campaign denied some of the story as false or exaggerated. Adams said that when the story broke, Peltola fled. 

“After that story broke, her campaign immediately put her on a plane to get her as far away from press as possible,” he said. “There was a national reporter and a local reporter at a campaign event for her. She didn’t answer any questions they were asking her about the story, and she immediately got into a car and drove off.” 

He contrasted that behavior with that of his boss, who has traveled the state with his wife, meeting with voters in areas that are both conservative strongholds and areas that are more liberal. 

JD Vance descends Air Force Two as he takes the stage in Fairbanks, Alaska. Photo: Mary Margaret Olohan for The Daily Wire.

Sullivan’s main argument is that he works for Alaska, that he is an ally of the president who brings Alaska’s problems to Trump’s desk. He talks about what he has done to support military investments for the state, how he has worked for fishermen and on seafood issues.

He points to the Alaska Railbelt Transmission Project, a 223-mile transmission line that will provide another high-voltage connection between Interior Alaska and Southcentral Alaska, reminding voters that he has pushed hard for this project (Vance credits Sullivan with the project too).

With only four more weeks until Election Day, both sides still have time to make their case to Alaskans. President Donald Trump has promised that he himself is headed to Alaska to campaign for Sullivan, a candidate he has repeatedly endorsed as a strong advocate for his state. “He’s had my ear for a long time on Alaska,” Trump said.

On Thursday, the RNC announced that Trump will be making the trip out to Alaska as well, speaking on Tuesday, October 13, in Wasilla, Alaska. 

“I’ll go out there to fight for him,” Trump promised. 

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