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Sullivan, with his marks on the table

Election Day is November 3. Early voting in Alaska began October 19. This is the whole race — the platforms, the records, the worst claims against each candidate, and what the sources actually show. There are two men named Dan Sullivan on this ballot, and that is not a metaphor. LiberalMind endorses one of them — the senator — with his marks on the record named below. Read the research.

How Alaska got here

This seat is contested because Alaska, alone among the states, elects its senators this way. Under the system voters approved in 2020, there is no party primary. Every candidate runs on a single ballot — this year on August 18 — and the top four finishers advance to November, where voters rank them. If nobody wins a majority of first choices, the last-place candidate is eliminated and those ballots move to each voter's next choice, round by round, until someone holds a majority.

Former U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola, a Democrat, finished first in the primary with 49.5%. Incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan — listed on the ballot as Daniel S. Sullivan — took 41.4%. Third, with 2.5%, was Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., a retired teacher and commercial fisherman from Petersburg who shares the senator's name and is running with no party affiliation. A fourth Democrat withdrew before the deadline, so the fourth November slot fell to Republican Gerald Heikes, who drew 1% in the primary.

The raters split. The Cook Political Report and Inside Elections call the race a toss-up. Sabato's Crystal Ball and Decision Desk HQ rate it Lean Democratic. Alaska voted for Donald Trump in all three of his presidential runs, most recently by double digits — but this state also sent Peltola to the U.S. House in 2022, and ranked-choice transfers, not first-choice votes, will decide this.

Why this seat is in play

Two stories explain how a two-term Republican incumbent in a Trump state ended up in a coin flip.

The first is Peltola herself. She is Yup'ik, born in Anchorage, raised on the Kuskokwim River, a commercial fisher who served a decade in the state House and ran the Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission before Congress. She held Alaska's House seat from 2022 until voters replaced her in the 2024 election, and her brand — pro-oil, pro-fishing, willing to buck her own party — is built for exactly this electorate. In her Ballotpedia candidate survey she wrote: "I will stand up to anyone – even my own party – to put Alaska first. That means fighting for Alaska oil and gas development projects to create good-paying jobs and lower costs, protecting Alaskans' fundamental rights, including the right to bear arms and the right to privacy."

The second story is the other Sullivan. The Alaska Division of Elections initially removed Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. from the primary ballot over accusations that he had entered the race to confuse voters and siphon votes from the senator. He denied it, and the Alaska Supreme Court ruled he had to appear on the ballot. Cook moved the race from Lean Republican to Toss Up on July 1, writing that the ballot's makeup was enough to shift its most competitive category, because in a ranked-choice count "even a few points could make the difference." The senator's own campaign has treated the namesake as a genuine threat: President Trump, rallying for Sullivan in Wasilla on October 13, told Alaskans that Democrats "put a guy named Sullivan" on the ballot to confuse them. There is no evidence in the public record that any party recruited him — the state supreme court kept him on the ballot, and he says he is running on his own. But the arithmetic is real: polls show him drawing 3–5% of first choices, and where those ballots rank the senator — or rank nobody and leave the count — may decide the seat.

Dan Sullivan (Republican)

His platform: Sullivan, first elected in 2014, previously served as Alaska's attorney general and commissioner of natural resources, and as a Marine Corps officer from 1993 to 2024. His campaign runs on the record: "From passing the biggest tax cut in American history and unleashing Alaska's energy potential, to making historic investments in our military and national defense and strengthening Alaska's healthcare system, Dan is running for re-election to continue delivering real results for Alaska." He has introduced a Bycatch Reduction Act for Alaska fisheries, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce endorsed him on August 14. In the campaign's final weeks he has also ticked up criticism of the Trump administration — Cook noted he recently joined other endangered Republicans in calling for a diesel export moratorium as fuel prices bite.

The worst claims — and the record:

Claim: He voted himself a $500,000 taxpayer-funded payout. The ad, from a Democratic-aligned super PAC, says Sullivan "voted to raise Alaskans' healthcare costs by $1,800 and on that same day voted to give himself a $500,000 taxpayer-funded payout." FactCheck.org found the ad "leaves the false impression that Sullivan received that money." He didn't. The November 2025 bill that ended the government shutdown contained a provision allowing eight Republican senators — Sullivan among them — to sue the federal government for up to $500,000 in damages over phone data obtained from them during the special counsel investigation into the January 6 Capitol riot. Sullivan said he learned of the provision only when reading the bill just before his vote, vowed he would not sue, and supported repealing the provision — which the House then voted to do. The healthcare half of the ad also needs context: the shutdown bill did not extend the enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies, but only 3.2% of Alaskans are enrolled in ACA plans, and the following month Sullivan was one of four Republicans who voted for a Democratic bill to extend those subsidies. It failed. So the same senator the ad paints as raising health costs voted, weeks later, to keep the subsidy program alive. Both facts belong in the record; the ad used one.

Claim: He cast the deciding vote to keep the Epstein files hidden. This one is Peltola's own ad, and FactCheck.org called it misleading. In September 2025, Sullivan voted to table a Democratic amendment to an unrelated defense bill that would have compelled release of the Epstein records — a 51–49 procedural vote. Two months later, the Senate passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act by unanimous consent, Sullivan included, and the president signed it. A senator who votes against a poison-pill amendment and then for the disclosure law itself has not voted to keep anything hidden. The ad's companion charge — that Sullivan took donations from "Epstein associates" — points to an $8,500 contribution from KKR founder Henry Kravis, whose name appeared in Epstein's contact book, and a $693 contribution from a real estate executive named in released emails. Neither man has been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with Epstein. Peltola's side has its own version of the same arithmetic: the Sullivan campaign promoted a Townhall report that Peltola accepted more than $140,000 across her campaigns from donors the outlet identifies as Epstein "associates" — including LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt — none of whom has been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein either. One genuinely ugly item did surface: a Republican operative later arrested in February 2026 on child sex-trafficking charges had given Sullivan's campaign a total of $149, in 2024 and September 2025, before the charges were known. On learning of the arrest, the campaign donated the money to the Alaska Network on Domestic Violence & Sexual Assault. Guilt by donation ledger is the cheapest currency in this race, and both campaigns are spending it.

Claim: He supported the largest Medicaid cut in history. Pro-Peltola advertising charges Sullivan with backing historic Medicaid cuts through the 2025 tax-and-spending law. The law's Medicaid provisions — work requirements and financing changes — are real, and the Congressional Budget Office estimated the law overall would leave roughly 11.8 million more Americans uninsured, largely through Medicaid. "Largest cut in history" is the advocates' label, not the CBO's; voters should weigh the underlying estimate, which is serious, rather than the superlative, which is marketing.

Claim, from his own side: the Alaska gas line is financed. At the October 13 rally, President Trump repeated his claim that South Korea will invest $50 billion in the Alaska LNG pipeline. Korean officials have disputed that figure. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Taiwan's CPC has agreed to buy 30% of the line's gas — under a non-binding letter signed last year. A project Alaskans have awaited for decades deserves better than rally arithmetic: what exists today is a non-binding letter and a disputed number.

The flaw, plainly: Sullivan's record is a conservative record, and the serious charges against him collapse under inspection — he did not pocket $500,000, and he did not bury the Epstein files. His real marks are smaller and worth naming: he voted for a 1,000-page shutdown bill containing a provision written for senators like him, and "I didn't know it was in there" is an explanation, not a defense — reading the bill is the job. He voted to extend the enhanced ACA subsidies, a pandemic-era expansion of the welfare state, weeks after his party let them lapse. And his campaign repeats the "biggest tax cut in American history" line, which does not survive measurement: PolitiFact rated the identical claim Mostly False — the Tax Foundation ranks the 2025 law third-largest since 1980 as a share of the economy only when the extension of the 2017 cuts is counted, and Reagan's 1981 cut remains the largest. A good law sold with a false superlative is still a false superlative.

Mary Peltola (Democratic)

Her platform: Alaska first, in her own framing: oil and gas development, commercial and subsistence fishing, the ferry system, the Railbelt energy grid, public radio, and education — plus, in her survey's words, "protecting Alaskans' fundamental rights, including the right to bear arms and the right to privacy."

The worst claims — and the record:

Claim: She voted against a pay raise for the troops. Ads from Sullivan's campaign and a supporting super PAC say Peltola "voted against a pay raise for our troops" and that voters fired her in 2024 partly for it. FactCheck.org's verdict: the ads "take advantage of that bit of legislative messiness to misleadingly claim that Peltola opposed military pay raises. She didn't." In July 2023 she voted against the House version of the defense bill — which contained the 5.2% raise — because of Republican amendments she opposed, including one limiting abortion access for military personnel. She called it "one of the most difficult votes I've ever had to take." When the House and Senate negotiated the compromise bill, with the raise intact and the amendments stripped, she voted for it. Her own counter-ad overreaches in the other direction: she says she "pushed through the largest pay increase for our soldiers in decades." She voted for it, as did Sullivan; the 5.2% figure was set by the statutory pay formula tracking the Employment Cost Index, and it was indeed the largest in over two decades — but no single House member "pushed through" a formula-driven raise.

Claim: She voted with the liberals who opened the border. The Sullivan campaign's fentanyl ad — featuring Sandy Snodgrass, whose 22-year-old son Bruce died of fentanyl in 2021 — says Peltola "voted with them against securing our border." FactCheck.org found the ad missing several important points of context. Peltola did vote against the Republican Secure the Border Act in 2023. The following year she was one of five Democrats who voted for a nearly identical bill, the End the Border Catastrophe Act. She voted for the Laken Riley Act, for a resolution denouncing the Biden administration's border enforcement and urging an end to its "open-borders policies," for blocking federal lands from use as migrant camps, for cutting funds to sanctuary cities — and she co-sponsored, in the House, the same fentanyl-prevention law Sullivan co-sponsored in the Senate, named for Bruce Snodgrass himself. The ad also implies the fentanyl that killed Bruce Snodgrass came across the border with migrants; experts and government officials say the vast majority of fentanyl is smuggled through legal ports of entry, mostly by American citizens. A grieving mother's grief is real. The voting record the ad describes is not the record Peltola compiled.

What she actually is: the most independent Democrat on this year's Senate map — and the limits of that independence are the honest question. She supports the military's abortion-access policies on reproductive-freedom grounds, in her own words: "We shouldn't be pitting pay raises that they deserve against the reproductive freedoms that they also deserve." In the Senate she would caucus with the Democrats and vote to organize the chamber under their leadership, which means her party's judges, her party's agenda, and her party's rules — with her heterodox votes available only when the outcome is already decided.

The flaw, plainly: Peltola is not Talarico. On oil, on guns, on the border, her record shows a Democrat who repeatedly broke with her party when Alaska pointed the other way — the strongest claim any Democrat on this map has to the Manchin exception. But the exception has a second test: what does the vote do to the Senate itself? A vote for Peltola is a vote to hand the gavel to the party whose national platform she herself keeps voting against. Her independence is real but rented — it lasts exactly as long as her vote isn't the deciding one on the questions Washington cares about most. Alaska deserves the version of her that shows up in Juneau and Kodiak. In Washington, she would be the 51st vote for a leadership she has spent her career dissenting from.

The verdict: Sullivan, with his marks on the table

Two serious candidates. One of them has a decade-long Senate record aligned with the values this publication serves — lower taxes, unleashed energy, a funded military, the right to bear arms — and a personal record the fact-checkers keep clearing of the charges thrown at it. The other is the best Democrat running anywhere this year, and she would still organize the Senate for the other side.

So this one earns what Texas could not: an endorsement. Vote Sullivan — the senator, Daniel S. — and rank him first. Ranking matters in Alaska: fill in the ballot, put the senator first, and let the transfers fall where they may. Hold him to the marks named here: read every page of the next thousand-page bill, stop selling a good tax law with a superlative that isn't true, and remember that the subsidy vote in December is the kind of vote that put this seat in danger in the first place.

Vote early. Research your candidates. Choose the best moderates, whatever their party — no extremism from either side. And encourage your friends and family to do the same.

Sources

AI-assisted article — but the sources are human, and the facts are very real.

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