Alaska Considers Economic Suicide
Alaska Considers Economic Suicide
The state has prospered under Trump, and the vulnerable Sen. Dan Sullivan deserves credit.
By Kimberley A. Strassel, WSJ
Oct. 15, 2026 5:32 pm ET
‘Build the line! Build the line! Build the line!” The chant roars through the sports center as Sen. Dan Sullivan revs up the crowd. It’s unleashed again when President Trump occupies the stage for his Tuesday midterm rally.
The crowd is cheering a proposed 800-mile liquefied-natural-gas pipeline that would mean jobs, energy and a cash bonanza for the state. It’s a project politicians have failed to deliver for decades, but it’s tantalizingly close to approval. That is, if Alaskans don’t vote on Nov. 3 for political and economic suicide.
That’s the choice in the Senate election here, the message the incumbent, Mr. Sullivan, needs to land if he wants to beat Democrat Mary Peltola. Alaskans are as bitter as lower-48ers about affordability (prices are even higher in this remote state), and many voters are unenthusiastic about rewarding the party in charge. Mr. Sullivan’s mission is to remind Alaska—a state almost wholly at the mercy of federal policy—that things could be worse. That a vote for Mrs. Peltola is a vote to re-empower a left determined to kill the Alaskan economy. And a vote to dismiss the only Alaskan senator with the president’s ear.
That’s no easy feat given an opponent who is capably capitalizing on short voter memories. Mrs. Peltola is the state’s best-known Democrat—having represented Alaska in the House from 2022 to 2025. Yet on the stump you might not know she’s ever heard of Chuck Schumer. She’s leaning into her Native Alaskan roots, positioning herself as uniquely cognizant of the state’s needs. She excoriates “politicians in D.C.” like the “self-dealing” Mr. Sullivan as “corrupt” and “rigging the system” against Last Frontier residents. At events, she blames Trump policies, tariffs in particular, and Mr. Sullivan for Alaska’s price problems. She praises prior Republican leaders—like her House predecessor, the late Don Young, for having put “Alaska first.”
Mr. Sullivan’s challenge is to refute this remarkable rewrite of recent history. Two years ago, Alaska faced an economic cliff. Joe Biden spent four years imposing the environmental left’s agenda on the state, issuing more than 70 orders and actions against its economy. He banned oil and gas leases, mining projects and timber harvests. He locked up land and fisheries and barred new roads. His paltry defense budgets starved Alaska’s military installations. In a state where nearly all the economy is based on oil and gas, the military, mining and seafood, this was an economic death sentence.
Mrs. Peltola served as a loyal assistant for 2½ of those years. She voted her party roughly 90% of the time, including votes to kill her own state. She voted against a bill to mandate more oil and gas leases offshore and in the National Petroleum Reserve. She voted against loan guarantees for the LNG project. In 2024, when a bill she co-sponsored to reverse the Biden administration’s oil lockup in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the National Petroleum Reserve finally came up, she bowed to pressure and voted “present.”
That was when she bothered to show up. Mrs. Peltola’s short House career was marked by chronic absenteeism. Records show she missed 17.2% of the votes in the 118th Congress—mirroring the 18.6% of votes she missed in her 10 years in the Alaska House. Maybe that’s why she failed to get a single bill signed into federal law, even under a Democratic administration. (Nick Begich Jr., her successor, has shepherded nine bills into law this term.)
Alaska’s nightmare ended with Mr. Trump’s return to office. Elevated prices aside, things have rarely looked more optimistic for the 49th state. On stage, Mr. Sullivan rips up his list of those 70 Biden actions—a document he entitled the “Last Frontier Lockup”—to riotous applause. He notes that Mr. Trump has put unrelenting focus on Alaskan prosperity and recounts the progress.
On Inauguration Day Mr. Trump issued an order entirely dedicated to Alaska that rescinded Biden policies and ordered federal agencies to maximize the state’s economic opportunities. The feds have restarted the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. They’ve thrown open the National Petroleum Reserve and held a record-breaking lease sale. New fields are coming online, filling the pipeline. Washington is streamlining permits, and oil players are rushing back north.
The Trump team approved the Ambler Road project, opening access to a rich mining area. It enacted regulatory fishing reform. Its roadless rule repeal would reopen the Tongass National Forest. A military buildup is sending money and jobs for missile defense, base upgrades, and (belatedly) home ports for four icebreakers in the only state with sea ice. And a real chance at the “line,” the LNG project. Mr. Trump is vowing a $50 billion South Korean investment, a deal that isn’t finalized but is giving Alaskans real hope.
What Mr. Sullivan can’t publicly say but savvier Alaskans understand is that these gains come down to his personal relationship with the president. Mr. Trump has a special dislike for Sen. Lisa Murkowski, given past votes against his agenda and in favor of convicting him in his 2021 impeachment trial. If Mr. Sullivan goes away, so does Alaska’s line to the presidency.
Would the administration continue its existing efforts? Maybe. Would it grant further favors? Not for a Murkowski-Peltola ask. Might the president visit retribution on that duo? Quite possibly.
“Voters are really starting to understand the ramification of a Sen. Sullivan not being in D.C.—just how negatively it will affect this state,” says Kevin Greene, senior adviser in Alaska for Americans for Prosperity Action, which has a team of dozens knocking on doors to remind voters of the stakes.
Mr. Sullivan faces two opponents: Mrs. Peltola and the state’s ridiculous ranked-choice voting system, which the Democrats are gaming. The dirty tricks include “Decoy” Dan Sullivan, a Peltola donor now running as a Republican, who will share the November ballot with the incumbent. Republicans are feverishly trying to educate this Republican state on how to fill out the ballot in a way that doesn’t accidentally elect the Democrat. If Mr. Schumer becomes Senate majority leader, it could be thanks to Alaska skullduggery.
The good news for Mr. Sullivan: Republicans are tuning in. The Trump team wisely bypassed purple Anchorage and Fairbanks to rally here, in the Mat-Su Valley, the state’s most conservative borough. It paid off. Trump enthusiasts lined up in the dark on Tuesday morning, waiting hours for the president’s afternoon talk. They crammed into every available space in this center, with many more braving the cold to watch outside on a big screen. The president was his usual winding self, but managed to impart the key message: Vote for Mrs. Peltola, and this state is toast. We’ll see if Alaskans choose wisely.
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