Two Republicans named Dan Sullivan share Alaska primary ballot
Alaska voters head to the polls Tuesday for a nonpartisan primary that will send the top four finishers in the Senate race to November’s general election. The 16-name field includes two Republicans named Dan Sullivan: Dan S Sullivan, the incumbent who has represented Alaska since 2015, and Dan J Sullivan, a retired schoolteacher and US Forest Service employee from the southeastern town of Petersburg, whose name appears just above the senator’s on the ballot.
The ballot lists “registered Republican” and “incumbent” next to senator Sullivan’s name. The Alaska GOP went to court to remove Dan J Sullivan from the race, arguing he was a “sham” contender propped up by Democrats to confuse voters and undermine the senator, but the effort was unsuccessful. Dan J Sullivan did not respond to a request for comment.
Alaska politics watchers describe Peltola, the Democrat running to unseat Sullivan, as the incumbent’s real threat. “The reason Mary Peltola has a chance is not because, necessarily, Democrats are surging in Alaska,” said Scott Kendall, an election law attorney who has worked for candidates of both parties, including Sullivan. “It’s that Mary Peltola, you know, she’s very pro-oil and gas development. She’s good on issues that matter to Alaskans’ pocketbooks, and that makes her just a bit of a unicorn.”
No Democrat has been elected to the US Senate from Alaska since 2008, and Democrats believe Peltola is the right candidate to break that run; her victory would put the party well on its way to retaking control of Congress for the final two years of Donald Trump’s presidency. Alaska’s politics are distinct from the lower 48’s: the economy relies heavily on oil and gas production, and the state’s Democrats tend to advocate for expanded production, in contrast with Democrats elsewhere who are concerned about fossil fuels’ role in driving the climate crisis. Alaska has voted for a Democrat for president only once — Lyndon B Johnson in 1964 — while power at the state level has oscillated between the parties, and bipartisan coalitions control both the state house and senate. Independents make up two-thirds of registered voters, Republicans about 23%, and fewer than 12% of Alaskans are Democrats.
Sullivan won election in 2014 after beating first-term Democratic senator Mark Begich, and he has been a reliable Republican vote in his two terms, hewing much closer to his party’s agenda than the state’s senior Republican senator, Lisa Murkowski, who has grown prominent nationwide for repeatedly bucking Trump.
Peltola cracked the GOP’s dominance of Alaska’s federal delegation in 2022, when Don Young — the Republican who had represented the state’s at-large US House district since 1973 — died suddenly. She triumphed in the special election to finish his term, becoming the first Alaska Native ever to serve in Congress, and won a full term later that year. In 2024, Republican Nick Begich III narrowly defeated her bid for re-election; Trump carried Alaska by more than 13 percentage points that year.
Seeking to show she can better advocate for Alaska’s interests in Washington, Peltola has put her moderate brand at the center of the campaign. Her slogan “fish, family, freedom” is a nod both to fishing’s cultural importance in Alaska — especially to its native communities, which form a potent political bloc — and to the issue of bycatch, whereby trawlers pick up valuable catches like crab and salmon in their nets, harming sport and commercial fishers alike. “Fish has always been, really, a passion issue in Alaska,” said Joelle Hall, president of the Alaska AFL-CIO, which has endorsed Peltola. Hall credited Peltola with making bycatch and the health of the fishing industry more prominent in the state’s politics.
During her time in the House, Peltola advocated for Joe Biden to approve Willow, one of the biggest oil and gas developments in decades — a decision that drew criticism from environmentalists over its potential to drive global heating but that Hall described as huge for unionized workers. “We are also in the middle of a little bit of an oil and gas boom in Alaska,” Hall said. “That’s because Mary Peltola brought us the Willow project with the Biden administration.”
Peltola may also get a boost from national trends breaking in Democrats’ favor, observers say. Trump’s approval ratings are low in the state as they are nationwide, and gas prices in Alaska have shot up since the start of the US-Israel war on Iran, and are now among the highest nationwide. Recent polls have found the two candidates neck-and-neck before the November election, and major election forecasters view Sullivan’s re-election bid as a toss-up.
Sullivan, a former Marine who served as the state’s attorney general and natural resources commissioner, has emphasized his focus on military affairs in a state with a large number of bases and veterans, along with his own efforts to preserve the state’s fisheries. Steve Frank, a Republican former state senator, said he believes Sullivan would be a more reliable advocate for the state’s economically vital oil industry, especially with the presidential administration set to change in another two years. “The federal government views us kind of like a colony, and they forget that we’re American citizens trying to earn a living up here,” Frank said. “And so they tend to want to lock us up, keep us from developing our resources, and so he’s pushing back against that.”
The race has drawn heavy outside spending. The Republican-aligned Senate Leadership Fund announced it will put $17m toward helping Sullivan, while the Democrats’ Senate Majority PAC invested $12m in backing Peltola. Federal Election Commission filings through the end of July show Peltola has outraised Sullivan, bringing in $18.5m to his $11.7m, with $4.6m on hand compared with the Republican’s $7.3m. OpenSecrets, a non-profit that tracks campaign donations, reported that two super PACs have spent a combined nearly $2m in Alaska recently to back other candidates who could siphon votes from both Peltola and Sullivan.
Also on Tuesday’s ballot: Nick Begich III, vying for a second term in the House seat against independent Bill Hill, the main challenger after Democrat Matt Schultz dropped out and endorsed him, and candidates to replace governor Mike Dunleavy, the Republican incumbent barred by term limits from seeking re-election.
Kendall predicted there may be less daylight than expected between Peltola and Sullivan on Alaska-specific issues. “I think she would probably frustrate a lot of Democrats, if I’m being honest. I think she would be, to national Democrats, what Lisa Murkowski is to national Republicans,” he said. “There’ll be a moment where a Democratic president says something like: ‘Well, I want to turn this huge swath of Alaska into a wilderness preserve, no hunting, no fishing, no development,’” he said. “She’s going to balk at that.”