Alaska politics are a little weird.
Right now, here in the Great Land, we have a few races open in this 2026 midterm election, and one of the big ones has former Democrat Rep. Mary Peltola challenging Dan Sullivan (No, not that Dan Sullivan, the other one, Republican Senator Dan Sullivan) for his Senate seat. Now, this is something of a key race, if the Republicans want to hold the Senate. Senator Sullivan is still looking pretty good to hold, as he has previously won election by considerable margins. But Mary has won two statewide races already, so Senator Sullivan can't rest on his laurels.
Neither can Mary Peltola, but she's freezing out Democrat aid from at least one source from Outside: Kamala Harris.
Former Vice President and 2024 Democratic Presidential candidate Kamala Harris sent an email to Peltola supporters Wednesday, urging support for Democratic challenger Mary Peltola in the toss-up Alaska U.S. Senate race.
The Peltola campaign says it doesn’t need the help.
“Mary isn’t seeking endorsements from anyone from the Lower 48 – her focus is and always will be Alaska,” a Peltola spokesperson said in a statement. “That’s why she’s proud to have the endorsement of AFGE, the Alaska AFL-CIO, Alaska IBEW Local 1547, and more than 10,000 Alaskans who have signed up to volunteer with the campaign.”
Her focus is supposed to be on Alaska. That's what the voters expect. But this tiff with Kamala isn't new.
In the 2024 election, Peltola did not endorse Harris.
“Looking at this presidential race, my position is whoever the president is, that is the person that I am interested in working with to help Alaska move forward,” Peltola said July 23, 2024, according to Alaska Public Media reporting. “Whether that president is Donald Trump, or if that president happens to be Kamala Harris … there will be a lot of common ground. There will be a lot of things that we collectively agree on.”
Did you feel that chilly Arctic breeze, washing down on Team Kamala?
Here's the thing: A Democrat like Kamala Harris can't win in a place like Alaska. Even most Alaska Democrats, for instance, can't mess with the Second Amendment, if they want to keep their phony-baloney jobs. Here in the Valley, for instance, even the hippies have guns, and other than a few heavily liberal districts (I'm looking at you, Anchorage) any candidate is better off dodging that issue, even if they are privately in favor of gun control laws.
Dan Sullivan had some thoughts on the whole thing.
The Sullivan campaign called Harris’s message a union between the two.
“Kamala Harris supported the Biden administration’s disastrous anti-Alaska agenda, which is why Alaskans rejected her by double digits,” Sullivan spokesperson Nate Adams said in a statement. “Alaskans can see exactly whose team Mary Peltola and Kamala Harris are on, and it isn’t Alaska’s.”
Mary, frankly, didn't have that great a track record. It's not that she was a nutty leftie in the style of Kamala Harris; she's not. But while she was representing Alaska in the House of Representatives, she was just kind of, well, there, and that's not something that wins elections. That's why, in 2024, Nick Begich III handily defenestrated her, and he's been doing a great job in Washington. And, I might add, we regularly see him here in Alaska, too, and not hanging out at Capitol Hill cocktail parties.
As I'm continually pointing out, you don't have to be a little bit crazy to live in Alaska, but it sure doesn't hurt any. Alaska's just a very different kind of place. I occasionally remind our youngest daughter, who remains unmarried, that Alaska still has a male/female ratio of about 110 to 100, prompting another saying about Alaska, one aimed at single women: The odds are good, but the goods are odd.
The odds are good that Dan Sullivan will keep his Senate seat, too. That's how it looks for now.
Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.
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