The two leading candidates in Alaska’s hotly contested U.S. Senate race faced off in an antagonistic debate on Thursday night that raced through the state’s many economic challenges while also veering into biting personal attacks.
Running to represent a state far removed from the contiguous United States, both Dan Sullivan, the Republican incumbent, and Mary Peltola, the Democratic challenger, strained to portray the other as a tool of the Washington elite while distancing themselves from their national parties.
Their contest carries high stakes, with Alaska viewed as a potential pickup for Democrats as they try to wrest control of the Senate from Republicans.
Here are six takeaways from their debate, which was held in Anchorage and is expected to be the final one of the contest.
Each portrayed the other as corrupt and out of touch.
A race playing out thousands of miles from Washington has centered on which candidate can convince voters that they are more attuned to the needs of working-class Alaskans while painting the other as beholden to the wealth of the “Lower 48.” On Thursday, both candidates wasted little time drawing a stark contrast on the issue.
Mr. Sullivan had grown wealthy during his time in Washington while losing touch with everyday Alaskans, Ms. Peltola charged. “Dan’s been in D.C. for 12 years and gotten richer every single one of those years,” she said. “That’s the corruption that Alaskans are really sick of and that’s the corruption that I’ll fight against.”
Mr. Sullivan shot back that Ms. Peltola “defines the rigged system in D.C.,” noting that she had joined a lobbying firm after losing re-election in 2024.
“There’s nothing more rigged than a member of Congress getting fired and then immediately walking through the revolving door to cash in,” he said. “Mary, you’re walking through the revolving door so much you must be getting dizzy up here.”
‘Quit interrupting!’ Testy exchanges and accusations of lying.
Neither candidate had a reputation as a pugnacious culture-war brawler, but civility remained offstage on Thursday night.
The candidates accused each other of spreading falsehoods on issues as varied as their records of voting for military funding, support for raising the retirement age and accepting money from donors with financial ties to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. “Dan just keeps telling lies and Alaskans are sick of it,” Ms. Peltola said at one point.
Mr. Sullivan said Ms. Peltola was falsely accusing him of opposing the release of the Epstein files. “Mary Peltola is using victims of Epstein to try to benefit her campaign — it’s so disappointing, Mary, it’s actually disgusting,” he said.
At times, Ms. Peltola cut into Mr. Sullivan’s responses.
“Quit interrupting!” Mr. Sullivan shot back.
Prices at the pump took center stage.
Persistently high prices — especially fuel costs stemming from President Trump’s war in Iran — have snarled Republican campaigns across the country, with voters blaming the administration for their financial woes. Perhaps no state has it worse than Alaska, where the average cost of a gallon of gasoline has climbed to nearly $8 in rural areas.
Mr. Sullivan had the tough task of being forced to defend unpopular Trump administration policies on energy, health care cuts and broader affordability concerns. He acknowledged that fuel costs were “a huge issue that is hurting people across the state.” But he tried to place the blame on Democrats, and argued that he had been a reliable vote in Congress for oil drilling projects that would bring down energy costs.
Ms. Peltola, who broke with the Biden administration when she was in Congress to support the oil industry, replied that she, too, was “a strong supporter of drilling in Alaska.”
And she argued that she would fight to lower prices in the state while Mr. Sullivan “has voted for this price-hiking war in Iran 14 times.”
Peltola responded to a report that she mistreated staff.
Last month, The New York Times reported that Ms. Peltola had verbally abused her campaign staff, used offensive slurs while serving in Congress and once shoved an aide. Mr. Sullivan said the report spoke to a “character flaw,” while Ms. Peltola whispered under her breath “that’s just not true.”
Asked about accusations of mistreatment by the moderator, Ms. Peltola replied, “I do not think that this election is about me on my worst day.”
Echoing her campaign’s earlier denial of many of the accusations, she added, “I found so many of these allegations concerning and outright fabrications or mass exaggerations of the truth.”
(Mr. Sullivan’s allies have made the allegations part of their campaign pitch. One of the accusations from former staff members was that she had made congressional aides feed live crickets to her family’s pet chameleon, Meatball, a task some considered demeaning. Before the debate, a person in a chameleon costume danced at a pro-Sullivan demonstration, waving a sign that said: “Meatball needs crickets. Alaska needs answers.”)
Alaska is focused on fish. And it’s a small world.
Some questions were a reminder of the unique concerns that animate politics in Alaska, where issues like the state of the commercial fishing industry play an outsize role in policymaking and elections. Both candidates hastened to position themselves as being opposed to large-scale commercial trawling by out-of-state companies.
The slogan of Ms. Peltola’s statewide campaigns has been “fish, family, freedom,” but Mr. Sullivan said she had failed to pass legislation while in the House that would improve the lives of subsistence fishers, while he had introduced a “bycatch” reduction bill that was blocked by Democrats.
Ms. Peltola replied that Mr. Sullivan was in the pocket of commercial trawlers and that he had “waited until the 11th hour for a halfhearted, half-baked solution.”
One moment offered a reminder of what a small world Alaska — with a population of under 800,000 — could be, and that even bitter rivals could end up sharing an upbeat experience. Asked to say something nice about their opponents, both candidates recalled how Mr. Sullivan’s wife had invited Ms. Peltola to attend the senator’s Marine Corps retirement ceremony.
“That was a lovely, lovely service, and I was so proud to be there,” Ms. Peltola said.
‘I’m prepared!’: Sullivan scrutinized Peltola’s notes.
Ms. Peltola seemed to spend much of her allotted time looking at her notes and apparently reading from them. Mr. Sullivan eventually grew frustrated by this tactic, asking the moderator, “We weren’t supposed to get these questions beforehand, were we?”
Told they weren’t, he said, “OK, I’m just watching my opponent read from some questions that seem to be answered.”
“I’m prepared!” Ms. Peltola replied.
The post Fish, Oil and Corruption: 6 Takeaways From Alaska’s Senate Debate appeared first on New York Times.
