President Trump vows to campaign in Alaska for incumbent Republican US Sen. Dan Sullivan

President Donald Trump said Wednesday in Washington, D.C., that he will travel to Alaska to campaign on behalf of incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, who appears to be facing a close race against Democratic challenger Mary Peltola. 

“I will go to Alaska to help Dan Sullivan get elected. … Dan Sullivan’s a great senator,” Trump said.

Because most U.S. Senate seats are in states controlled firmly by Republicans or Democrats, control of the U.S. Senate as a whole will be decided by a relative handful of races nationally, including the one this year in Alaska.

A spokesperson for Sullivan’s campaign did not immediately return an email seeking comment on Thursday.

In the just-completed August primary election, Peltola had 49.5% of the vote; Sullivan had 41.4% of the vote. 

Despite that performance, a recent poll of voters likely to participate in November indicates a race that’s in a virtual dead heat. That poll is similar to others conducted earlier this year.

On Wednesday at the Oval Office, one reporter asked Trump why the race is so close.

“I don’t know. Well, it’s close for one reason that they have a phony Dan Sullivan,” Trump said. “This guy’s a phony and he was put up by the Democrats and they don’t admit it, but it’s been so proven.” 

The third person in Alaska’s four-way race for U.S. Senate is Dan J. Sullivan, a Republican from Petersburg who earned 2.5% of the vote in the August primary. 

Many of Dan J. Sullivan’s votes in the primary came from Democratic-leaning districts, and both he and people representing Peltola’s campaign have said that there has been no coordination between the two.

Despite that, the president, the incumbent and other Republicans have accused Dan Sullivan of nefarious actions without providing evidence.

On Wednesday, Dan J. Sullivan told Alaska Public Media that he was out picking mushrooms and hadn’t heard the president’s remarks.

When reached by the Alaska Beacon on Thursday, he declined comment. 

Trump incorrectly said Dan J. Sullivan had never voted. 

“He hasn’t voted for years. A totally pretty nonpolitical person, I guess, but never had any thought of running,” Trump said. 

State records show Dan J. Sullivan is a “supervoter” who has cast ballots in 17 state and local elections since 2017. 

“That guy got two and a half percent in the recent primary. And that’s — two and a half percent is a lot when it comes to winning elections. And it’s a disgrace,” Trump said.

Trump also criticized Alaska’s ranked choice general election system, saying it amounted to picking a name out of a hat. 

Under the Alaska system, voters are asked to rank the four candidates (and any write-ins) in order of preference. If one candidate receives more than half of the first-preference votes, they win.

If no one has more than half the votes, the lowest finisher is eliminated, and their votes go to voters’ second choices. The process repeats until only two candidates are left, and the person with the most votes wins.

It isn’t clear how much Trump’s influence would help the incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan. 

Alaska has voted for Trump each time he has run for president. In 2024, 54.5% of participating voters picked Trump for president, putting him 13 percentage points ahead of Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.

“It’s a long trip. I love Alaska. You know, I won Alaska by a landslide,” Trump told reporters attending a gathering of travel industry officials.

But since that election, Alaskans’ opinion of Trump appears to have soured. Public opinion polling conducted in August found that more than 56% of Alaskans have a negative view of Trump. 

In 2022, Trump visited the Alaska Airlines Center at the University of Alaska Anchorage to boost the campaigns of U.S. Sen. candidate Kelly Tshibaka, U.S. House candidate Sarah Palin and governor candidate Mike Dunleavy. 

Tshibaka and Palin lost their races that year; Dunleavy won his. 

As of Thursday, no one representing the president had booked the Alaska Airlines Center, a UAA official said.

Trump also visited Anchorage last year to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin. Though highly promoted as an opportunity to end the Russia-Ukraine war, the event resulted in little more than a photo opportunity.

Sullivan has been a mostly reliable vote in the Senate for Trump’s agenda since the president was re-elected in 2024. In 2025, Sullivan voted along with Trump on every major topic before Congress. This year, Sullivan has only occasionally voted against Trump’s goals, including once against the President’s plans to distribute $1.8 billion in public funds to supporters, including those convicted of participating in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Trump said he is in regular contact with Sullivan.

“He would call me all the time because I think — no, I definitely know — nobody has helped Alaska like Donald Trump. We’ve invested billions and billions of dollars and created trillions of dollars in value,” Trump said, exaggerating trends on the ground in the state. 

According to Federal Reserve data, Alaska’s gross domestic product rose by about $3.5 billion between 2024 and 2025, continuing a trend that started in 2020. 

He also exaggerated the importance of Alaskan oil internationally.

“You have Japan, you have South Korea, you have all of these people now going to Alaska to load up with fuel, load up with oil, build pipelines, everything else,” Trump said.

Only about 5% of Alaska North Slope crude has been exported internationally this year. 

Trump said his trip to Alaska will be one of several that he intends to take before Election Day on Nov. 3. 

“I will be going to Alaska. I’m going to be going the last 30 days before the election. I’ll be making a lot of stops,” Trump said.

“I’m going to be campaigning for numerous people, both Congressmen — a few governors, I love the governors — but we’re interested in the Senate, and we’re interested in the House. So I’ll be campaigning for the House members and I’ll be campaigning for senators,” he said.