A conservative editorial board warned voters in one red state that defying President Donald Trump at the ballot box carries a steep price.
Kimberley Strassel, a member of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, wrote Thursday that Alaska risks losing Trump’s favor and possibly facing his retribution if voters oust Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) on November 3.
In her Potomac Watch column, Strassel cast the Senate race between Sullivan and former Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola as a choice between continued federal support and what she called “political and economic suicide.” She credited Trump with reversing dozens of Biden-era restrictions on drilling, mining and logging in the state and with pushing a long-stalled natural gas pipeline that Sullivan supporters chanted about at a Tuesday rally in Wasilla.
But Strassel also conceded that the windfall hinges on something other than policy. She wrote that the state’s gains “come down to” Sullivan’s personal relationship with the president, a point she said the senator “can’t publicly say.” Trump, she noted, harbors a “special dislike” for Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), who voted to convict him at his 2021 impeachment trial.
“If Mr. Sullivan goes away, so does Alaska’s line to the presidency,” Strassel wrote.
She went further, questioning whether the Trump administration would keep its current commitments to the state if Peltola joined Murkowski in the Senate. Strassel said new favors would dry up for requests from the two women, and she asked outright whether Trump might punish them. Her answer was “quite possibly.”
Strassel also took aim at the state’s ranked-choice voting system, which she called “ridiculous,” and accused Democrats of gaming it. She pointed to a Peltola donor also named Dan Sullivan who is running as a Republican, a candidate she dubbed “Decoy” Dan, and said GOP organizers were scrambling to teach voters how to fill out their ballots without accidentally electing the Democrat.
Peltola, who represented Alaska in the House from 2022 to 2025, has blamed Trump’s economic agenda and Sullivan for high prices in the state and has called the incumbent “corrupt.” Strassel dismissed that pitch as a rewrite of recent history.
Strassel wrote that Trump’s message to the Wasilla crowd boiled down to a blunt warning. A vote for Peltola, she wrote, would leave the state “toast.”
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