Two rulings just reshaped Alaska's Senate race

Two rulings this week reshaped Alaska's marquee Senate race — one about how much money can flow into it, the other about whose name is even on the ballot.

Start with the money, because it's the bigger shift. The U.S. Supreme Court on a 6-3 vote struck down federal limits on how much national party committees can spend in direct coordination with their candidates. Until now, a party could coordinate only a capped amount with a Senate campaign — a ceiling that ran from roughly $130,000 to a few million depending on the state. That cap is gone. National party committees can now spend without limit, hand in hand with a candidate, on ads, polling, and voter outreach.

For Alaska, the timing is everything. The state's Senate race is already one of the most closely watched in the country, and this ruling lets the national parties pour effectively unlimited coordinated money into it — a spigot that was regulated a week ago and isn't now. Writing for the majority, Justice Brett Kavanaugh held that the old caps violated the First Amendment, overruling a 2001 precedent and reasoning that disclosure and anti-earmarking rules already guard against corruption, making the limits unnecessary. It's the latest step in a line the Court began with Citizens United in 2010, steadily loosening the rules on campaign money.

The dissent drew the sharp version of the worry. Justice Elena Kagan warned that with no cap, a party can become a candidate's "checking account" — a conduit for the wealthy to route influence straight to a campaign. Reform advocates echoed that a candidate is only as independent as the money behind them allows.

One limit worth understanding: the ruling covers coordination between parties and candidates, not the outside super PACs that already dominate spending — those raised $15.7 billion in 2024, against $2.7 billion for the parties. So this doesn't create big money in politics; it removes one of the last walls between a candidate and the party machine spending on their behalf.

And it lands in an Alaska race that just got stranger. The same week, the Alaska Supreme Court cleared a second Dan Sullivan for the August 18 primary ballot — a retired Petersburg schoolteacher who will now appear alongside the incumbent, Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan. So as the parties gain the freedom to spend without limit on their candidate, Alaska voters will be sorting out which Dan Sullivan that candidate even is.