By Edward-Isaac Dovere, CNN
(CNN) — Democrats are getting the news they’d been hoping for out of Alaska, with former US Rep. Mary Peltola launching a Senate campaign on Monday morning.
The one-and-a-half-term former congresswoman was elected at-large from the small-population state in a 2022 special election and reelected that fall, before losing in 2024. She had been hotly pursued by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer as Democrats’ best prospect in a state that last elected a Democrat to the Senate in 2008.
Peltola will run against Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan, who announced last year he’d seek a third term. Peltola had also been considering a run for governor, but like Sherrod Brown in Ohio, was urged by national Democrats into the Senate race instead as they try to knit a path to the majority in the currently 53-47 Republican-controlled chamber out of a set of seats open this year that do not include much favorable territory.
In her launch video, Peltola ties her own work drying fish to that of many Alaskans, whom she says have seen abundance turn to scarcity that Washington politicians haven’t dealt with. Her agenda, she says, is “fish, family and freedom.”
Peltola invokes the legacies of longtime Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens and Rep. Don Young, both Republicans, whom she says used to put the state over politics. She even runs vintage clips of the two men in their prime.
“No one from the Lower 48 is coming to save us, but I know this in my bones, there is no group of people more ready to save ourselves than Alaskans,” she says. “Ted Stevens often said, ‘to hell with politics, put Alaska first.’ It’s about time Alaskans teach the rest of the country what Alaska First and, really, America First looks like.”
Though voting predominantly for Republicans since becoming a state in 1959, Alaska has always had an independent streak. Peltola is hoping to tap into that by pledging support for term limits. A campaign aide told CNN she is proposing a limit of 12 years in Washington: six House terms or two Senate terms, though the state has generally tended to keep sending the same people to Washington for decades.
Peltola is also attacking Sullivan for going along with the larger Republican agenda in Washington last year when he supported measures like cutting funding to the public media stations which many Alaskans relied on.
But Peltola’s entry into the race caps off a year of intense and successful recruiting by Schumer and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chair Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, with favored candidates now running in North Carolina, Maine and Ohio, along with encouragement in several other races — even as some of those candidates face primaries.
Democrats have been eagerly anticipating Peltola’s announcement for the last few weeks, with a group associated with the Democratic-aligned super PAC Senate Majority PAC last month posting a “Grinch Who Stole Christmas”-themed video accusing Sullivan of benefiting from the Trump budget bill he voted for at the expense of Alaskans. That group already in 2025 spent $1 million hitting Sullivan on higher costs and heath care prices, according to one person familiar with the spend.
Sullivan responded to those ads with a video released by his government office last week conducted entirely while standing on skis, as he boasts tax cuts and building pipelines, then holds up sheets showing policies he opposed from the Biden administration and Schumer, which he tosses on the ground before skiing away.
As for those attacking him, “we know who these groups are,” Sullivan says as the “Psycho” theme music plays over shots of Schumer, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. “These are the most far-left, radical groups in America.”
Republicans have also been focusing on the new Alaska-based military spending that was included in the budget bill at Sullivan’s urging.
“Alaska’s veterans and service members know they can count on Dan Sullivan to deliver for them,” Nick Puglia, a spokesperson for the Senate Republicans’ campaign aim said last month in a statement celebrating those appropriations. “Alaskans will reelect Sullivan to continue standing with President Trump and his Peace Through Strength Agenda.”
Alaska’s other senator, Lisa Murkowski, is also a Republican, but one who regularly voices skepticism of Trump and votes against him on top priorities, including last week’s vote objecting to the administration’s unspecified military plans in Venezuela.
The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
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