Most of Alaska labor backs Peltola. Sullivan took some anyway.

The larger share of Alaska's organized labor is behind Democrat Mary Peltola, including the state's biggest labor federation. But Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan has drawn a notable share of his own, including unions that cross the lines usually assumed to divide them.

The Alaska AFL-CIO has endorsed Peltola. Several unions on the federation's own affiliate list have endorsed Sullivan.

That split makes membership totals almost meaningless as a measure of who has more labor behind them. The Alaska AFL-CIO says it represents about 50,000 workers through more than 50 affiliated unions. But some of those affiliates are backing Sullivan, so the 50,000 cannot be read as 50,000 Peltola supporters, and it cannot be set against the membership of the Sullivan-endorsing unions without counting many of the same people twice. Endorsements are decisions made by union boards, PACs or conventions, not tallies of how members will vote.

Peltola's labor support includes the AFL-CIO, IBEW Local 1547, SEIU 775 and the Association of Flight Attendants. The political action committee of ASEA/AFSCME Local 52, the state's largest public-employee union, has recommended her, and her campaign announced an endorsement from the American Federation of Government Employees in August. Electricians, caregivers, flight attendants and government workers are in that coalition.

Sullivan's labor support is smaller but not marginal, and it reaches into unions that might be expected to favor Peltola. Teamsters Local 959, which says it represents more than 5,000 Alaskans in jobs from nursing and telecommunications to trucking and oil-field work, endorsed him in January, citing oil-field jobs, road work and Port of Alaska funding. The Alaska District Council of Laborers, roughly 5,000 workers across three locals in construction, energy, health care and service jobs, followed later that month, pointing to prevailing-wage protections, infrastructure spending and Sullivan's votes for federal labor nominees. Operating Engineers Local 302 endorsed him in June. So did the Public Safety Employees Association, a public-sector union representing state troopers and other public-safety workers.

Those endorsements do not sort into a clean public-worker-versus-trades divide. Peltola has the electricians of IBEW Local 1547, a building-trades union. Sullivan has the Public Safety Employees Association, a public-sector one, along with Teamsters and Laborers whose members work across many industries.

The unions on each side are, in effect, weighing two different theories of what serves workers.

The organizations backing Peltola tend to cite bargaining rights and workplace protections. She was an original cosponsor of the 2023 PRO Act, which would strengthen union organizing, and her record includes a vote to guarantee railroad workers seven paid sick days during the 2022 dispute over a threatened national rail shutdown.

The unions backing Sullivan tend to cite work. The Teamsters, Laborers and Operating Engineers each pointed in their endorsements to the projects their members build and the policies that fund them: oil-field jobs, road and port construction, the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law, federal permitting and prevailing-wage protections. For a construction or trades union, the volume of available work is itself a core labor issue.

The candidates' records complicate any clean version of that divide. Peltola has cited her support for the Willow oil project, a major North Slope development, as evidence her labor appeal includes resource jobs. And both she and Sullivan voted against Congress simply imposing a contract on railroad workers in 2022; they split only on the remedy, with Peltola backing the paid-sick-leave amendment and Sullivan proposing an additional 60 days of bargaining instead.

Among business and employer groups, the endorsements so far lean toward Sullivan. He has the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Alaska Support Industry Alliance, and the ANCSA Regional Association, whose members are the 12 land-based Alaska Native regional corporations, among the largest private employers in the state. That endorsement does not commit the individual corporations, which set their own political course, and at least one has gone the other way: Sealaska, the Southeast regional corporation, endorsed Peltola.

Alaska's general election is Nov. 3.