Vice President Vance flies to Fairbanks to stump for incumbent Alaska senator

Near the end of a 33-minute speech to an enthusiastic Republican crowd gathered in a Fairbanks airport hangar on Monday, Vice President JD Vance got to the point about why he was making an extraordinary campaign stop in Alaska.

Incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, a Republican, is facing a stiff challenge in the midterm election, and the outcome of the Senate race in Alaska could tip control of the body to Democrats, Vance warned.

“My friends, the Democrats are obsessed with this state this cycle. AOC and Kamala Harris and the rest of them, they see the Last Frontier as their last best hope to take America in a far left direction, to impeach Donald J. Trump, to turn off the energy projects that we’re building all across this state, and to throttle this state and this country’s incredible progress,” he said, referring to Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Harris, the 2024 Democratic presidential candidate.

Vance was in Fairbanks as part of a series of Trump administration campaign stops in red states ahead of the midterms. President Trump is expected to visit Alaska later this month. 

The Vance event drew hundreds of attendees, many of them arriving several hours before Vance stepped out of Air Force 2 onto a platform to deliver his speech.

The vice president used the occasion to blast Democrats.

“Now we all know this: They are ruthless. They will do whatever they need to do, right up to cheating, and right up to lying, right up to putting somebody on the ballot who has no reason to be there other than to help them steal an election,” he said, a reference to retired Petersburg teacher Dan J. Sullivan, the third candidate in the four-way race who has the same name and party affiliation as the incumbent.

There is no evidence that the Democratic party had any role in the candidacy of Petersburg Dan Sullivan, and the state Supreme Court has affirmed his right to run, despite Sen. Sullivan’s claims that his candidacy is fraudulent.

Alaska Democrats characterized Vance’s appearance on behalf of Sullivan as a mark of desperation.

 “Sullivan sent word to his home state of Ohio to get another Ohio politician to fly in,” Alaska Democratic Party Chair Eric Croft said in a news conference held on Monday afternoon at the Fairbanks airport, before the rally started.

There is nothing wrong with people being born outside of Alaska, Croft said. “There is something inherently wrong with our U.S. Senator having no answers to Alaskans’ questions, and having to punt to Outside sources to do that,” he said.

Stuart Relay, chair of the Alaska Interior Democrats, said the rally showed that GOP leaders were fearful of losing what was once a reliably Republican state.

“The fact that Vice President Vance is coming to Alaska is an encouraging sign that our momentum is heading in the right direction,” Relay said at the news conference.

Sen. Sullivan’s main challenger is the former U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola, a Democrat and the first Alaska Native to serve in Congress. Vance spent much of his speech blasting her.

He characterized her as both lazy and corrupt. He said she missed one in five votes and never passed a bill.

The claim about Peltola passing no bills during her two-year House stint is not quite correct, according to the information clearinghouse govtrack.us. Two of the bills for which she was the prime sponsor became law by being folded into other legislation.

He said she was a “failure for the state of Alaska” who allowed “boys to compete in girls’ sports” and took other Democratic stances on social issues.

“Here’s the thing, ladies and gentlemen: When the far left calls, Mary answers, and she does exactly what they tell her to do,” Vance said.

Peltola did oppose a 2023 House bill that would have barred transgender students from participating in sports in schools in Alaska and elsewhere, calling it “federal overreach.”

Vance credited Sullivan — whom he referred to as “my dear friend” and “this amazing patriot” — with a military buildup in Alaska and with bringing national attention to Alaska’s military importance.

Prior to Sullivan’s service in the Senate, Vance said, “the Pentagon, the Department of War, what we then called the Department of Defense, it treated Alaska as a strategic backwater, as something to forget and ignore.”

However, Sullivan is far from unique in stressing Alaska’s strategic importance to the nation’s defense.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command has had a regional base in Alaska since 1961. And past U.S. senators representing Alaska secured defense spending in the state and emphasized the state’s strategic importance. The late Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, famously secured funding for military operations in Alaska. He chaired the powerful Appropriations Committee from 1997 to 2005; from 1981 to 2008, he served on that committee’s defense subcommittee, A 2009 resolution passed by the Alaska legislature noted that Stevens, over his 40-year career in the Senate, “educated the national public on the geographical importance our state plays on the world stage” and secured funding and support for military operations.

Vance also credited Sullivan with numerous accomplishments for Alaska fisheries, a hot-button issue in the current Senate race, saying he blocked Russian fish exports from reaching the U.S. market. 

In reality, the ban on Russian seafood imports into the United States was accomplished by executive orders issued by then-President Joe Biden, though both Sullivan and Peltola sponsored bills seeking bans.

Vance credited Sullivan with the U.S. Coast Guard’s presence in waters off Alaska. “It’s thanks to Dan that our Coast Guard is now patrolling the waters, ensuring that Alaska’s fish go to Alaska’s fishermen, not to foreigners who are trying to steal from our fisheries,” the vice president said.

The U.S. Coast Guard has operated in Alaska for over 150 years.

Vance also credited Sullivan for boosting Alaska oil activity on the North Slope and pushing a long-desired natural gas megaproject proposal that would deliver stranded resources from the North Slope to markets.

“What he will tell you is that the Alaska LNG project is the single greatest priority for energy dominance in the United States of America, and we’re building it right here,” Vance said.

Trump, Sullivan and others last week falsely claimed the Republic of Korea had committed to spending more than $50 billion to build the Alaska LNG project.

Still, Vance portrayed the LNG project as a sure thing. “Dan will never stop fighting for this. And we are gonna get it done. I promise you that,” he said.

Generally, vice presidential visits to Alaska have been in Anchorage. Sullivan, who arrived in Fairbanks with Vance on Air Force 2, said no sitting vice president had visited Fairbanks since the 1970s, when Spiro Agnew came to the city during the debate over authorization of the Trans Alaska Pipeline System and wound up casting a tie-breaker vote in 1973 that secured passage of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act. However, there have been more recent visits. Joe Biden, as vice president, delivered the eulogy in 2010 at the Anchorage funeral of the late Sen. Ted Stevens, and Mike Pence and Kamala Harris made stopovers in Anchorage during the first Trump administration and the Biden administration.

Sullivan spoke for slightly less time than Vance did. Like Vance, Sullivan devoted much of his speech to criticisms of Peltola and ominous descriptions of potential Democratic control of the Senate.

He led a “No Show Peltola” chant, a criticism aimed at her record of missed votes — about 18% — and what he characterized as a lack of accomplishment.

Sullivan also delivered ominous descriptions of potential Democratic control of the Senate. He repeated his frequent criticisms of the Biden administration for its environmental and climate change mitigation policies; he called former Secretary of State John Kerry, who served as a climate envoy in the Biden administration, a “knucklehead.”

“This is what Democrats do whenever they get power. It is a core element of who they are, the far left. They come to Alaska to shut down our state and try to turn us into a national park, kill thousands of jobs,” Sullivan said.

“Here’s something that’s really important for everyone to know: The Iran conflict is temporary. The true forever war is the national Democrats’ war against Alaska energy and Alaska jobs,” Sullivan said.

Peltola’s campaign, in a statement, disputed Sullivan’s characterizations — and criticized him for supporting the Iran war, which has caused energy prices to spike.

“As Dan Sullivan continues to feel the fallout of his price-hiking policies and support for the war in Iran, Mary remains focused on lowering costs, fixing the rigged system in DC, and putting Alaska first. Mary will work with anyone – no matter who is in the White House – to deliver for Alaska, and that’s why Alaskans will hold Dan Sullivan accountable for his failed policies this November,” the statement said.

Before Sullivan and Vance arrived at hangar in Air Force 2, the hundreds of attendees at the Fairbanks rally mingled for hours and enjoyed pageantry.

There was loud, pulsating music, some of it from the movie Top Gun. There were attendees decked out in costumes and MAGA gear. There were speeches by Republicans Gov. Mike Dunleavy, Rep. Nick Begich III and Alaska Republican Party Chair Carmela Warfield.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, in town to visit University of Alaska Fairbanks facilities, also spoke, describing plans for human outposts on the moon and Mars. Those endeavors are “thanks to President Trump and Vice President Vance and congressional leaders like Senator Sullivan and Congressman Begich,” Isaacman said.

There were appearances of several legislators and candidates, including all three Republican gubernatorial candidates, who are vying against Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins in Alaska’s ranked-choice voting system. 

Eric Croft, chair of the Alaska Democratic Party, questioned the gubernatorial candidates’ decision to attend the rally.

“What’s the value in that? They really don’t have any Alaskans to talk to?” he said.

But state Rep. Kevin McCabe, R-Big Lake, said the rally made sense for the candidates.

“Well, they get exposure, you know,” McCabe said as attendees were filling the hangar in the hours before Vance arrived. “They’re here with the people that are going to vote for them, so they get to talk to people and shake hands, and it’s kind of a closed environment, so I don’t know how they could miss it, personally.”

McCabe shrugged off Trump’s current low approval ratings. “I don’t think he cares too much about his approval rating,” McCabe said.