Bill Hill challenges Rep. Nick Begich with affordability pitch in Alaska

Cook Political Report shifts race to ‘leans Republican’ days before the vote

Independent Bill Hill, a commercial fisherman and 25-year educator, is challenging first-term Republican Rep. Nick Begich for Alaska’s lone US House seat in the 3 November election, as Republicans fight to maintain their narrow majority in Congress.

Hill, a Dena’ina Athabascan Native Alaskan, has worked as a commercial fisherman since he was eight years old, held union construction jobs with Laborers’ Local 341 and spent 25 years in education as a union teacher, principal and school district superintendent. He has positioned himself as a working-class candidate who will fight to make life more affordable for people like himself and his family.

Affordability sits at the center of the race. Alaskans, like voters across the country, are deeply worried about the rising cost of basic necessities, and Hill counts himself among those squeezed by fuel prices he ties to Trump’s war on Iran.

“When the spring fuel barge showed up in my home town of Naknek this spring, I went from paying $118 to fill my truck up to over $200,” Hill said. “Our gas went from $6.70 a gallon to almost $9 a gallon.”

Hill said the cost of heating fuel has nearly doubled, from $4.50 a gallon to $8.30, and that price increases in some of Alaska’s more remote villages have soared even higher. In Ambler and Shungnak, Indigenous villages along the Kobuk River near the Arctic circle, the price of a gallon of gas has surpassed $25. “This is crushing Alaskans,” Hill said. “We are feeling the crunch every single day.”

The cost pressure is broad. More than one in three Alaskan households are not earning enough income to cover housing, food, childcare and other essential expenses, according to a report by the United Way of Anchorage and Alaska 211 published earlier this month. Hill cites cuts to the SNAP nutrition-assistance program and Medicaid, the expiration of Affordable Care Act tax credits, Trump’s tariffs, federal job losses in Alaska and the administration’s cancellation of several Alaskan renewable energy projects as factors adding to Alaskans’ costs, with many of the cuts in the president’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act set to go into effect in 2027.

Hill’s campaign has gained momentum in the race’s final weeks as national Democrats line up behind him and advertising spending ramps up. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee added the contest to its “red to blue” program in September, and the nonpartisan Cook Political Report recently shifted the race from “likely Republican” to “leans Republican” in a district that favors Republicans by 6%. Recent polls show Hill trailing Begich by single digits, though his support grows when voters learn more about his background as he works to boost his name recognition.

Begich, a conservative and the son of a prominent Democratic family in Alaska, narrowly ousted incumbent Democrat Mary Peltola in 2024, prevailing by 2.4 percentage points in a state Trump won by 13. Peltola is currently running for US Senate.

Begich is the only Republican in the four-way general election, which is run under Alaska’s ranked-choice system. Polls suggest support for Democrat Eric Hafner — who is serving time in a federal prison in New York and has no apparent links to the state — could complicate Hill’s path. Hill has not specified whether he would caucus with Democrats if elected. He is among several independents challenging Republicans in red states this cycle, alongside Senate candidates Dan Osborn in Nebraska and Todd Achilles in Idaho.

Hill has made the wealth gap between the two men a campaign theme. His reported assets are valued at $119,000, while Begich is worth at least $7.4m. “It is getting very, very difficult for working people in Alaska to get by,” Hill said, charging that his opponent was a “multimillionaire working for billionaires”. He added, “He’s somebody who doesn’t represent the everyday Alaskan in his work.”

Begich’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment, but his congressional office has previously denied that his wealth affects his voting record. “Congressman Begich’s personal finances have no impact on his legislative decisionmaking process,” Silver Prout, a spokesperson for Begich’s congressional office, told the Anchorage Press in an email.

Begich has praised the passage of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, calling it a “transformative victory”, and has continued supporting Trump’s war in Iran.

Like Peltola, Hill supports gun rights, in line with Alaska’s strong hunting tradition, and backs both the oil industry and the renewable energy industry. He casts his candidacy in personal terms. “I have spent a life being in the ditches, in the school hallways, on the back decks of fishing boats with hard-working people, running a small business like so many Alaskans do, and I know what the struggles and challenges that we face are,” Hill said. “I also know what our hopes and dreams are.”

Labor backing has become one of the race’s clearest dividing lines. Alaska has one of the highest union density rates in the US — 18.1% of the state’s workers were union members as of 2025, the third-highest rate in the country behind Hawaii and New York — and more than 20 labor organizations, including the Alaska AFL-CIO, have endorsed Hill. Begich, by contrast, has signed on to the National Right to Work Act and holds a 0% lifetime voting score from the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of labor unions in the US.

“Unions need more support in Congress, and we see attacks on trying to tear down their power in this nation,” Hill said. “At the end of the day, unions built the middle class of this country, and they’re the ones who can do it again.”

Alaskans decide the seat on 3 November.