Former Democratic Alaska Rep. Mary Peltola announced Monday that she is running for the Senate in her state, giving Democrats a boost in their longshot bid to retake the upper chamber in the midterms.
Peltola positioned herself as an independent-minded Democrat in her announcement video, saying her agenda will focus on “fish, family and freedom” as well as introducing term limits and addressing rising costs in the state. The top Democratic recruit served as Alaska’s sole House member for over two years before Republican Nick Begich defeated her by less than three percentage points in 2024, the same year President Donald Trump won the state by 13 points.Â
“My agenda for Alaska will always be fish, family and freedom, but our future also depends on fixing the rigged system in D.C. that’s shutting down Alaska while politicians feather heir own nest,” Peltola said in her video. “D.C. people will be pissed that I’m focusing on their self dealing and sharing what I’ve seen first hand. They’re going to complain that I’m proposing term limits, but it’s time.”
Incumbent Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who had crossed party lines to endorse Peltola in her House race in 2022 and 2024, pushed back against Peltola’s Senate bid and quickly endorsed her opponent, Sen. Dan Sullivan, a two-term Republican and a retired colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves.
“We’ve had a pretty solid team here in the Senate for the past 12 years, so we want to figure out how we’re going to keep in the majority, and Dan delivers that,” Murkowski said in a statement on Monday.
Peltola is the first Alaskan Native to serve in Congress. While representing the Last Frontier, she broke with the party’s gun policy as a strong supporter of the 2nd amendment and backed oil drilling in the Arctic while also supporting other mainstream Democratic positions such as abortion access.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) was quick to support Peltola, writing on social media that she “has always been a champion for Alaskans, focusing on her core values of fish, family, and freedom” and that “she’s going to win this seat.”
Peltola’s pivot to a Senate is seen as a recruiting victory for Democrats, as Peltola was reportedly eyeing a run for governor of Alaska. Peltola now joins other highly-touted Senate Democrat recruits such as former Sen. Sherrod Brownin Ohio and former Gov. Roy Cooper in North Carolina.
The pro-GOP Senate Leadership Fund’s Executive Director Alex Latcham said in a statement that Peltola is “everything that is broken in Washington.”
“Mary Peltola represents everything that is broken in Washington: A defeated career politician-turned-lobbyist who repeatedly voted against American energy independence, secure borders, and the Alaskan way of life,” Latcham said. “Democrats are desperately trying to revive a Far-Left politician, but Alaskans know why they fired Mary Peltola in the first place.”
Democrats need a net gain of four Senate seats to flip the chamber in November. Their most likely path to pulling off this daunting feat, according to race ratings by the nonpartisan Cook Political report, hinges on winning Alaska’s race, in addition to flipping seats in Maine, North Carolina and Ohio, as well as holding onto all of their current seats, including winning competitive races in Georgia and Michigan.
Alaska’s elections use a nonpartisan top-four primary in which all candidates appear on the same ballot and the four candidates receiving the most votes advance to the general election. In the general election, voters use ranked-choice voting (RCV), ranking candidates in order of preference. If no candidate receives a majority of first-choice votes, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and their votes are redistributed to the remaining candidates based on voters’ next choices. This process of elimination and redistribution repeats until one candidate secures a majority.
Peltola notably upset former Republican Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin — the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee — in the final RCV tabulation round of the 2022 House special election to replace late longtime Republican Alaska Rep. Don Young. This was notably the first federal election in Alaska to use RCV.
The last Democrat to represent Alaska in the Senate was former Sen. Mark Begich — Rep. Begich’s uncle — who served one term in the upper chamber before losing reelection to Sullivan in 2014.
Alaska notably only voted for a Democrat for president once in 67 years it has been in state, as former President Lyndon B. Johnson carried it during his 44-state landslide 1964 victory.
Peltola’s campaign did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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