{"id":816691,"date":"2026-08-17T15:34:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T15:34:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/816691\/"},"modified":"2026-08-17T15:34:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T15:34:11","slug":"a-tale-of-two-dan-sullivans-republicans-with-same-name-contest-alaska-primary-alaska","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/816691\/","title":{"rendered":"A tale of two Dan Sullivans: Republicans with same name contest Alaska primary | Alaska"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dan J Sullivan is a retired schoolteacher and US Forest Service employee living in the town of Petersburg in south-eastern Alaska<\/a>, who is running as a Republican for the US Senate. Dan S Sullivan is a Republican US senator, who has represented Alaska since 2015.<\/p>\n

Both candidates will appear<\/a> on the ballot, one name after the other, when Alaskans vote in primary elections this week \u2013 a complicated quirk of the contest that has drawn howls from Republicans.<\/p>\n

But the incumbent senator\u2019s real threat, Alaska politics watchers say, is Mary Peltola<\/a>, a Democrat who managed to twice win election to the state\u2019s seat in the US House of Representatives, and is now vying tobeat him in November\u2019s midterm elections in the US Senate. The Tuesday vote in the non-partisan primary will see four candidates advance to the general election for the seat in November.<\/p>\n

Though no Democrat has been elected to the US Senate from Alaska since 2008, the party believes Peltola is the right candidate to flip the seat, and her victory would put Democrats well on their way to retaking control of Congress for the final two years of Donald Trump\u2019s presidency.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason Mary Peltola has a chance is not because, necessarily, Democrats are surging in Alaska,\u201d said Scott Kendall, an election law attorney who has worked for candidates of both parties, including the senator Sullivan. \u201cIt\u2019s that Mary Peltola, you know, she\u2019s very pro-oil and gas development. She\u2019s good on issues that matter to Alaskans\u2019 pocketbooks, and that makes her just a bit of a unicorn.\u201d<\/p>\n

The largest state in the union but physically separated from the lower 48, Alaska has unique politics. With an economy heavily reliant on oil and gas production, the state\u2019s Democrats tend to advocate for expanded production, in contrast with their counterparts elsewhere, who are concerned about fossil fuels\u2019 role in driving the climate crisis.<\/p>\n

While Alaska has only once voted for a Democrat in a presidential election \u2013 Lyndon B Johnson, in 1964 \u2013 power has oscillated between the two parties at the state level, and bipartisan coalitions today control both the state house and senate. Independents make up two-thirds of registered voters and Republicans about 23%, while fewer than 12% of Alaskans are Democrats.<\/p>\n

Sullivan won election in 2014 after beating the first-term Democratic senator Mark Begich, and has been a reliable Republican vote in his two terms, hewing much closer to his party\u2019s agenda than the state\u2019s senior Republican senator, Lisa Murkowski, who has grown prominent nationwide<\/a> for repeatedly bucking Trump.<\/p>\n

Peltola cracked the GOP\u2019s dominance of the state\u2019s federal delegation in 2022 when Don Young, the Republican who had represented the state\u2019s at-large US House district since 1973, died<\/a> suddenly. She triumphed in the special election to finish his term, becoming the first Alaska Native<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

Peltola in Anchorage, Alaska, on 31 August 2022, when she became the first Alaska Native ever to serve in Congress. Photograph: Kerry Tasker\/Reuters<\/p>\n

Alaska voted for Trump by more than 13 percentage points that year, but Peltola is viewed as Democrats\u2019 best bet for the Senate race in one of a handful of red states the party is targeting to win back a majority in the upper chamber.<\/p>\n

Seeking to prove that she can better advocate for the state\u2019s specific interests and needs in Washington, Peltola has put her moderate brand of politics at the center of her campaign. Her slogan \u201cfish, family, freedom\u201d is a nod both to the cultural importance of fishing in Alaska \u2013 and especially to its native communities, which form a potent political bloc \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cFish has always been, really, a passion issue in Alaska,\u201d said Joelle Hall, president of the Alaska AFL-CIO, which has endorsed Peltola. Hall credited the former congresswoman with making the issue of bycatch and the health of the fishing industry in general more prominent in the state\u2019s politics.<\/p>\n

During her time in the House of Representatives, Peltola advocated for Joe Biden to approve Willow, one of the biggest oil and gas developments in decades. The decision raised the hackles<\/a> of environmentalists for its potential to drive global heating, but Hall describes it as huge for unionized workers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are also in the middle of a little bit of an oil and gas boom in Alaska,\u201d said Hall. \u201cThat\u2019s because Mary Peltola brought us the Willow project with the Biden administration.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peltola may be further boosted by national trends breaking in Democrats\u2019 favor. Trump\u2019s approval ratings are low<\/a> in the state as they are nationwide, while gas prices in Alaska have shot up since the start of the US-Israel war on Iran, and are now among the highest nationwide. Polls<\/a> have recently found the two candidates neck-and-neck before the November election, and major election forecasters view Sullivan\u2019s re-election bid as a toss<\/a>–up<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A former marine who served as the state\u2019s attorney general and natural resources commissioner, Dan S Sullivan has emphasized his focus on military affairs in a state with a large number of bases and veterans, as well as his own efforts to preserve the state\u2019s fisheries.<\/p>\n

Steve Frank, a Republican former state senator, said that despite Peltola\u2019s efforts to see Willow approved, he believed Sullivan would be a more reliable advocate for the state\u2019s economically vital oil industry, especially with the presidential administration set to change in another two years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe federal government views us kind of like a colony, and they forget that we\u2019re American citizens trying to earn a living up here,\u201d said Frank, referencing moves by the Biden administration to protect tracts of Alaska land<\/a> and water<\/a> from oil drilling. \u201cAnd so they tend to want to lock us up, keep us from developing our resources, and so he\u2019s pushing back against that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The race has seen major spending, with the Republican-aligned Senate Leadership Fund announcing it will put $17m towards helping Sullivan, while the Democrats\u2019 Senate Majority Pac invested $12m into backing Peltola. Federal Election Commission filings until 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\u2019s $7.3m.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, OpenSecrets, a non-profit that tracks campaign donations, reported<\/a> that two Super Pacs (political action committees) have spent a combined nearly $2m in Alaska recently to back other candidates who could syphon votes from both Peltola and Sullivan.<\/p>\n

Also on the ballot in Tuesday\u2019s election will be Nick Begich III, who is vying for a second term against independent Bill Hill, the main challenger for the House seat after Democrat Matt Schultz dropped out and endorsed him. Alaskans will also select candidates to replace governor Mike Dunleavy, the Republican incumbent who is barred by term limits from seeking re-election.<\/p>\n

Dan J Sullivan of Petersburg, Alaska, who did not respond to a request for comment, is listed just above the senator among the 16 names running for Senate, though Dan S Sullivan has \u201cregistered Republican\u201d and \u201cincumbent\u201d next to his name.<\/p>\n

The GOP went to court to boot Dan J Sullivan from the race, arguing that he was a \u201csham\u201d contender propped up by Democrats to confuse voters and undermine Senator Sullivan, but were unsuccessful.<\/p>\n

Though it\u2019s a marquee race of this year\u2019s US Senate elections, when it comes to Alaska-specific issues, Kendall predicted there may wind up being less daylight than would be expected between Peltola and Sullivan on Alaska-specific issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think she would probably frustrate a lot of Democrats, if I\u2019m being honest. I think she would be, to national Democrats, what Lisa Murkowski is to national Republicans,\u201d said Kendall.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019ll be a moment where a Democratic president says something like: \u2018Well, I want to turn this huge swath of Alaska into a wilderness preserve, no hunting, no fishing, no development,\u2019\u201d he suggested. \u201cShe\u2019s going to balk at that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dan J Sullivan is a retired schoolteacher and US Forest Service employee living in the town of Petersburg…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":816692,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-816691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=816691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816691\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/816692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=816691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=816691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=816691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}