BETHEL, Alaska — In this remote city in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, a pound of tomatoes costs nearly $7. Milk, when it’s available, is more than $13 a gallon. Almost all residents hunt or fish to feed themselves. Otherwise, they would go hungry. The cost of groceries is just too high.
Gas, currently $10 a gallon, is delivered during one small window each year by barge when the river water thaws. If the price is high when the gas arrives, as it has been this year due to the war in Iran, tough luck.
“That’s the price you’re set stuck with,” said Nicholai Joekay, a 42-year-old Bethel resident, on a recent blustery afternoon. “We’re already spread thin and you just get spread even more thin.”
Few places feel the national concerns over affordability more acutely than Alaska. Though the state is usually red, Democrats believe frustration over high prices and the Trump administration will help them flip Alaska — a key state in their quest for control of the Senate. Former congresswoman Mary Peltola, a Democrat, is tying her opponent, incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan, to Republican policies that she said is making the cost of living worse.
“Cuts to public radio, cuts to VA benefits, cuts to SNAP,” Peltola said at a recent campaign event in Anchorage. “It’s like reverse Robin Hood.”
Sullivan, who has been in the Senate since 2015, asserts he has a record of delivering the federal support Alaska residents rely on for their everyday life — from pandemic assistance to policies that protect the state’s fisheries. He has cast Peltola as someone who accomplished little during her time in Congress, and who won’t have the same success he has had bringing federal funds home.
“In two terms in Congress, she did not have one bill signed into law. I had 63 signed into law in two terms,” Sullivan said during a candidate forum in Kodiak.
The race has turned the normally collaborative political culture of Alaska on its head as the two candidates, who once worked closely together representing the state, engage in a fierce battle over what is more important to Alaskans: electing someone who promises to buck the White House and make life more affordable or a senator who has used his ties to national Republicans to bring home federal aid.
Alaska’s remoteness, weather, vast size and diffuse population mean federal programs can often be a matter of life or death. Medicaid pays for patients in rural Alaska to fly to major cities to see specialists, for instance, while public radio provides weather updates that determine whether it’s safe to travel or fish.
Peltola is a native of Bethel and the surrounding villages, an area where the indigenous Yup’ik culture runs deep and close collaboration is necessary to survive the harsh elements. In town, Yup’ik, English, Korean and Albanian can easily be heard in the same room. All residents learn to fish and hunt together.
Joekay, who has voted Republican in the past, said he appreciated Peltola’s background as a former working fisherman who understood the challenges facing rural Alaska.
“Being able to see our values, our way of life, those things are invaluable,” Joekay said. “There’s only so much education that you can do for people that don’t know about rural Alaska.”
Democrats are optimistic that the economic environment and Peltola’s past electoral successes in Alaska will help her candidacy, but they still face several challenges in defeating Sullivan. Alaska elected Trump in 2024 by more than 13 percentage points, and Alaskans often react with hostility to national Democrats, seeing them as against oil and gas development. Fossil fuel revenues fund a major share of the state’s budget, depending on the price of oil on the global market.
Last week, the New York Times reported Peltola fostered a hostile work environment while in Congress and during her Senate campaign, one that included the use of homophobic and ableist slurs. In a statement, Peltola spokesperson Harry Child acknowledged that she used inappropriate language while grieving her husband and mother, who died within months of each other in 2023, but said Peltola treats her staff with respect.
Still, Democrats have continued to rally behind Peltola, casting doubt the allegations will cause much heartache with Alaska’s electorate.
“Growing up in rural Alaska, language is rough,” said Jim Lottsfeldt, an Alaska strategist who has supported both Republican and Democratic campaigns. He is working with super PACs backing Peltola this year.
Sullivan has repeatedly questioned Peltola’s ability to deliver. Peltola missed more than 18 percent of votes in the U.S. House, and was the 10th most absent member that Congress. After leaving the House, she worked for the lobbying and legal firm Holland and Hart, earning more than $340,000, but failed to bring in any clients, according to two people familiar with her performance.
Peltola’s allies have pushed back on criticism of her missed votes in Congress, noting past Alaska lawmakers also missed more votes than average due to their long commute to DC.
When asked about her attendance during a 2024 debate, Peltola snapped: “I have had a series of tragic things happen in my family, and my hope is that in the next two years, my mother and my husband don’t die.”
Sullivan, a two-term senator, contrasts Peltola’s work with his 12-year legislative record on issues crucial to the state, including to Alaska Natives, and on fishing and energy development.
He is an ardent defender of Alaska Native Corporations, for-profit entities whose shares are held by Alaska Natives and provide Native communities land and economic support, and has successfully pushed to renew exceptions to bans on whale hunting and approve infrastructure projects that helped connect isolate Native communities. The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act Regional Association, which represents the corporations, endorsed Sullivan this year.
Sullivan’s ties to Trump likely made many of these accomplishments possible, said state Senate President Gary Stevens, who is voting for Sullivan, though he found the senator’s support for Trump frustrating.
Theresa Peterson, a commercial fisherman based in Kodiak, praised Sullivan for his work extending USDA benefits to the fishing industry and curtailing marine debris. Sullivan helped keep Alaskan fish prices competitive by restricting imports from Russian fishing boats, she said.
But Peterson said she would vote for Peltola, concerned over Sullivan’s support for the Trump administration after its Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) gutted federal agencies needed for the fishing industry — one of state’s economic lifebloods — such as NOAA Fisheries and weather reports.
“We depend on the weather and the surveys to be safe at sea,” Peterson said. ”And those cuts weren’t well done.”
Peterson is not alone in her views. Many Peltola supporters acknowledge that Sullivan has a strong standing in Alaska but question his support for policies such as Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill, which is projected to cut more than $1 trillion from Medicaid, Medicare and the Affordable Care Act or his repeated votes against ending the war in Iran.
“Dan Sullivan still would have won this election, I believe, but for the decisions that he and the national Republican Party made,” said Democratic state Sen. Forrest Dunbar, a Peltola backer.
Peltola was a prized recruit for Democrats. Heralded as a uniquely strong candidate after previously winning a statewide House seat in 2022, Peltola has deep relationships among members of both parties and has a history of going against her party. Her backers have praised her for her advocacy for Alaska’s oil and gas industry as a member of Congress, including pushing the Biden administration to reverse its opposition to a major project in the North Slope that was ultimately approved.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R), a close Peltola friend going back to their days in the state House, even encouraged her to run for governor, according to two sources familiar with the conversations. The governor seat is also on the ballot this year. (Murkowski endorsed Sullivan in the Senate race but she has not taken an active role in campaigning for him.)
The Senate race, which the nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates as a toss-up, is incredibly narrow. Turning out partisans won’t be enough to win: more than 60 percent of Alaska voters are independents, making party labels less important than proving you can make life easier in a state often forgotten by the rest of the country.
“Mary’s one of us. How can you not vote for her?“ said Mark Leary, business director of the Native Village of Napaimute near Bethel.
Leary, who grew up with Peltola, conceded that Sullivan was a strong senator who has worked well to secure resources for rural Alaska.
“He’s been our guy,” Leary said. “But now we have one of us.”
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