Is Alaska about to become the new Florida?
Florida in the year 2000 during the bitter George W Bush vs Al Gore election dispute, that is.
With the midterm election only a couple of days away, reliably Republican Alaska has become one of the most surprising and controversial states in the entire vote.
Mary Peltola, the Democrat candidate for the US Senate, is up two points, 49 per cent to 47 per cent, over the Republican incumbent Daniel Sullivan.
If she wins it could help Democrats flip the Senate and, with polls showing they are heavily favoured to take the House, retake Congress and turn Donald Trump’s final two years as President into misery.
But this week the race was upended by a bombshell New York Times report that claimed Peltola’s campaign team helped to recruit another man called Dan Sullivan to run in the election.
The other Dan Sullivan, a retired teacher who lives in a remote fishing village, was an apparent attempt to confuse voters and siphon off votes from the Republican.
The Peltola campaign and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee have denied any involvement in his candidacy. Sullivan has maintained that he entered the race of his own volition.
The report has led to Trump demanding that Peltola be prosecuted, while the state’s Governor, Mike Dunleavy, has opened a criminal investigation, with an extraordinary warning that the count during Tuesday’s election could be stopped.
That comment sets the stage for a protracted legal fight on a par with Bush vs Gore in 2000, which went all the way to the US Supreme Court to determine who won the presidential election.
Republican Senator Dan Sullivan, left, and a candidate in Alaska’s Senate race, Dan Sullivan, right (Photos: Mark Thiessen/Becky Bohrer/AP)The mood in the state after the NYT report is now one of “outrage”, according to Forrest Nabors, a professor of political science at the University of Alaska-Anchorage.
“If this is a close election, all it takes is 2 per cent of the votes to switch sides and Sullivan has got it,” he said.
Nabors cited a post on X by the other Alaska Senator, Republican Lisa Murkowski, which accused Peltola of lying. Peltola has denied any involvement in the alleged scheme, saying she knew nothing of the ballot-stacking effort, and accusing Murkowski of trying to distract voters from more important issues.
“Four fifths of voters had not cast their ballot by the time this story broke,” Nabors said. “I think there’s now a strong likelihood Senator Sullivan is going to win”.
The unique case of Alaska
That we are talking about Alaska in the 2026 midterms at all speaks to just how unusual a campaign cycle this is.
States that are normally Republican are in play due to Trump’s historic unpopularity, fuelled by the cost of living and the war on Iran. Even Mississippi and Texas are being eyed up by Democrats, who are desperate to take full control of Congress.
Yet Alaska is an unusual fit because it is an unusual state.
Twice the size of Texas but with half the population – 700,000 – Alaska has only once backed a Democratic presidential candidate – Lyndon Johnson – in 1964.
It has the second highest number of independent voters in the nation and its politics lean to the right with a strong emphasis on energy, given that its territory includes the largest oil field in the US.
That explains why Peltola’s campaign tagline has been the hokey slogan: “Fish, Family, Freedom”. In 2024, while serving as a US representative, she missed a week of votes because she was back home helping her family prepare fish to store away for the winter, a decision dubbed “the most Alaskan thing ever”.
But it seems to be working: Peltola beat Sullivan in a primary election in August – a trial run for the main event – and has consistently been polling ahead of him as voters embrace her attacks on the corruption in Washington.
Mary Peltola, a Democrat running for the US Senate seat in Alaska, appears to have been damaged by the NYT report (Photo: Mark Thiessen/AP)Mark Sabbatini, editor of the Juneau Independent, based in the state capital, Juneau, said that Trump’s unpopularity was hindering Sullivan.
”Right now this race in Alaska will come down to whether people do or don’t support the Trump agenda,” he said. “You’re talking about two candidates who by and large support more development of oil and gas, candidates who differ in degrees about commercial fishing in North Alaska.
“It comes down to whether you support Trump or not”.
Sabbatini said that fuel prices had reached “comical” levels in some rural areas: in the remote north-west town of Shungnak they hit $26.82 (£20) a gallon because the fuel had to be flown in when barge deliveries got blocked.
“Fuel prices are causing all kinds of problems, more so than in other states,” Sabbatini said.
“Here in Juneau, projects are being downsized or cancelled because the price tag has skyrocketed because it’s unaffordable and that’s been blamed on Trump’s tariffs.”
Veteran Alaska newspaper columnist and author Dermot Cole said that, unlike candidates in other states, Sullivan had not been openly critical about Trump.
“Sullivan has been really extremely careful to never do anything to irritate Trump and hasn’t distanced himself from him at all,” he said. “Yet there’s just one picture of Trump on Sullivan’s website and Trump is not mentioned in his ads.
“He skips over the Iran war, he doesn’t talk about Ukraine, [Vladimir] Putin. He’s running entirely on how much federal spending he’s got for Alaska, not Donald Trump.”
Peltola has ramped up her attacks on Trump since firing her campaign manager in August. Since then, according to Cole, the attack ads from both sides have been “overwhelming” and he expects the vote to be “really close”.
“Trump has harmed the Republican Party,” he said. “He hasn’t done anything that’s a consistent message they can campaign on. It is bizarre. Had he focused on anything other than the ballroom other than the arch and the reflecting pond this wouldn’t be happening”.
The Chugach Mountains, Alaska. Some rural areas of the state are so remote that fuel for cars has to be flown in by helicopter – making prices for locals incredibly high (Photo: Lindsey Wasson/AP)Dirty tricks from left and right
Into that already volatile mix, the Department of Justice has thrown a lawsuit challenging the results of the election – if Republicans lose.
Trump has said he ordered the suit, which claimed that the Dan Sullivan/Dan Sullivan ballot could be confusing.
Legal experts say the claims stand little chance in court, not least as it was a Republican committee that approved the ballot. One candidate will be listed as “Sullivan, Daniel J Jr” and the other as: “Sullivan, Dan S (Registered Republican) Incumbent”.
But then came the NYT story, which kicked the controversy into another gear, linking Peltola’s campaign to the spoiler Sullivan, accusing her staff of helping in efforts to find somebody with the same name as her Republican opponent.
It’s not a good look, but ballot stacking is hardly new: in 2024 a Republican activist paid two Bob Fergusons to run in the election for the Washington state attorney general in an effort to draw voters away from the Democrat candidate – called Bob Ferguson.
Even President John F Kennedy wasn’t immune: John Francis Kennedy, a Gillette razor factory showroom superviser, ran against him in 1954 when he was running for the Senate.
While running with the same name as another candidate is legal, the practise tips over into criminality when campaign funds are used for it, or records are falsified. There is no suggestion that this has occurred in the Alaska race.
Dunleavy, the state’s Republican governor, has pledged to “follow the law”. Asked if he would certify the election, he said, “If we conclude things were illegal….that may in fact impact whether somebody is seated in the US Senate”.
Peltola has denied wrongdoing but already the Republican-led House Oversight Committee is threatening to subpoena her staff to get to the bottom of what happened.
Nabors said the NYT story about Peltola had “really damaged her”.
“Sullivan seems to have picked up momentum in his last month and he was closing the gap,” he said. “You could see it on the ground”.
Cole said that it would be a “shock” if Peltola won but it might be the right set of “odd circumstances” that would mean she was victorious.
The last time a Democrat won a Senate seat in the state was in 2009 after the Republican incumbent was found guilty in a corruption case eight days before the vote.
“Republicans are claiming there’s mass confusion but if you look at the ballot it’s unmistakable which candidate is which.
“One thing is for sure: if it’s close there’s going to be a lawsuit.”
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