Peltola cites fuel costs as barrier to rural Alaska campaign stops

Mary Peltola's U.S. Senate campaign has wrapped a tour of off-the-road-system Alaska, using small planes, boats, and seaplanes to reach villages and island towns the campaign says are largely invisible to conventional political advertising — and to press the affordability message at the center of her bid to unseat Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan.

The Democrat's campaign said it visited communities including Toksook Bay, Quinhagak, St. Mary's, Pilot Station, Hooper Bay, Chevak, Scammon Bay, Petersburg, Wrangell, Metlakatla, Ketchikan, Sitka, and Haines, with the most recent leg covering six Southeast towns and ending in Haines. More than 80 percent of Alaska is unreachable by road, and the campaign says traditional advertising never reaches thousands of voters there; it describes its approach as a "person-to-person, human-to-human, mukluk telegraph," with a stated goal of reaching more than 220 villages. By the campaign's account, residents at meet-and-greets raised housing costs, health care cuts, fisheries management, public-radio funding, and the Alaska Marine Highway ferry system.

The cost of rural living is well documented beyond the campaign. State surveys put average unleaded gasoline at $6.63 a gallon across 99 rural communities this past winter, and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, has said some villages pay as much as $15 a gallon — prices that strain home heating and the fuel needed for subsistence hunting and fishing. Affordability is the theme Peltola has built her campaign around since announcing in January.

She faces a steep, nationally watched contest. Sullivan, first elected in 2014 and seeking a third term, is a well-funded incumbent, and outside money from both parties is flowing into a seat some analysts see as a possible tipping point for control of the Senate. Notably, reporting has found that Peltola and Sullivan align on most large resource-development projects, narrowing their differences to issues like cost of living, health care, and federal spending.

Peltola is no stranger to the stakes. The first Alaska Native elected to Congress, she won a U.S. House seat in 2022 before losing it to Republican Nick Begich III in 2024. Under Alaska's election system, she, Sullivan, and 14 other candidates will appear on the Aug. 18 open primary ballot, with the top four advancing to a ranked-choice general election on Nov. 3.