FISH WILL NOT decide the midterm elections in November, but they aren’t irrelevant either. Whether Democrats win back the Senate depends in no small part on the race in Alaska, which depends in no small part on fish. The state’s first big Senate debate, on Kodiak Island on September 12th, was devoted to fisheries. Mary Peltola, the Democratic challenger and an Alaska Native, debated Mr Sullivan while wearing rubber boots.
Dan Sullivan, the Republican incumbent, suggested that dwindling salmon is “probably the most important issue facing Alaska”. “Fish is in my blood,” she proclaimed.
NOAA’s lab on the Kodiak Archipelago, which surveys crab in the Bering Sea, lost a third of its scientists last year to firings, buyouts or early retirements, according to Mike Litzow, its former director. America’s 49th state has long favoured moderates and cross-party collaboration. Alaska is the only state that combines a non-partisan primary with ranked-choice voting. Ms Peltola is a product of this environment. Ms Peltola and Ms Murkowski endorsed each other that year. And in a country so eager for authenticity that Democrats swooned, temporarily, for Graham Platner, an oysterman in Maine, Ms Peltola has a surfeit of it. It helps that Ms Peltola is sometimes happy to side with the president. Alaskans have also been disproportionately affected by the Department of Government Efficiency’s dismantling of the federal bureaucracy. Take fishing, again. Officials and fishermen rely on data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to set seasonal fishing quotas, track fish stocks and monitor the weather. The administration’s hostility towards the federal bureaucracy also, ironically, increased the lab’s administrative burdens. Every purchase made with a government credit card was scrutinised. Ms Peltola has so far raised about twice as much money as Mr Sullivan and is spending heavily, presenting herself not as a Democrat but a local. In such a big state, with many remote communities, Kodiak’s fishermen were pleased to see their candidates show up to compete for their votes.
In 2010 Lisa Murkowski, Alaska’s other Republican senator and a centrist, lost to a Tea Party candidate in the primary, then won the first write-in Senate campaign in more than 50 years. She first won statewide in 2022, when she beat Sarah Palin, a former governor and Republican vice-presidential nominee, to represent Alaska in the House of Representatives. She captained her first fishing boat at 14 and lost her husband when he crashed flying a bush plane bearing too much moose meat. Mr Sullivan, who was first elected in 2014, argues that Ms Peltola and a Democratic Senate majority would restrict leasing and drilling in the Arctic. The Alaska Department of Labour and Workforce Development reckons the state lost nearly 5% of its federal workforce in 2025, a higher share than any state other than Maryland and New Mexico. Federal employment in Alaska is now at its lowest level in more than 35 years. “That requires something like 12 layers of approval.
The ruling majority in the statehouse is a “tri-partisan” coalition of Democrats, Republicans and non-partisans. “When it comes down to it, parties really don’t play an important role,” says Gary Stevens, the state Senate president who worked alongside Ms Peltola in the legislature in the early aughts. Mr Sullivan’s campaign ads try to portray Ms Peltola as a puppet for “Lower 48 liberals”, but she often bucks her party—the National Rifle Association supported her in 2024. “My opponent would ally herself with the anti-Alaska energy groups in Congress, who will do what they always do: shut down Alaska energy,” he said in Kodiak. Ms Peltola has released a pro-oil ad in which she promises to “work with Donald Trump to unlock more land and more development”. To survey crab “people have to travel to Dutch Harbour to get on the boat,” explains Mr Litzow. “Someone who worked for me had a credit card packet with 15 purchases for the month, and the packet was 385 pages of documentation,” he recalls. “For Mary Peltola,” one campaign ad declares, “no party, no politics gets in the way of what Alaska needs. Several fishermen at the debate who identified as Republican said they view her as one of them.
