Democrats’ long-shot bid to flip Alaska’s Senate seat
The NPR Politics Podcast
NPR
4.4 • 25.7K Ratings
🗓️ 24 March 2026
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode: voting correspondent Miles Parks, senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro, and Alaska Public Media Washington correspondent Liz Ruskin.
This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye.
Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And Alaska Public Media's Liz Ruskin is here with us today. Hi, Liz. Hi, Miles. It's great to be here. I'm so excited to have you here in studio with us. |
| 0:21.3 | ahead of this year's midterm elections, we are looking at interesting races. |
| 0:24.8 | So you all probably guessed it today. |
| 0:26.6 | We are focusing on Alaska, a red state that Democrats are hoping to pull off an upset in in the Senate race this November. |
| 0:35.2 | So let's just start there, Liz. |
| 0:37.2 | This is a race, this Senate race, |
| 0:39.1 | that has an incumbent. What can you tell us about Republican Senator Dan Sullivan? |
| 0:44.2 | Well, Dan Sullivan, when he got into politics, I would say he was a George W. Bush Republican. |
| 0:51.3 | He served in the State Department under the Bush administration. And he's |
| 0:58.3 | evolved. He was skeptical of President Trump at first, a candidate Trump in 2016 when the |
| 1:06.0 | Access Hollywood tape came out. He called on Trump to get out of the race. But now he's cleaving closely to Trump. |
| 1:17.1 | What issues, I guess, are important to him or that do you think that he's going to campaign on this year? |
| 1:22.8 | Well, his big issue, and this isn't surprising, it's developing Alaska's resources. |
| 1:28.3 | And he recently gave a big speech to the Alaska legislature and annual address. |
| 1:33.5 | And he just railed against Biden, the Biden administration. |
| 1:39.5 | President Biden's been out of office for quite a while now. |
| 1:42.9 | But he is still running sort of against Biden and all of the measures he took to conserve federal land in Alaska. |
| 1:54.5 | Which is very different than what most Democrats would run on in a state like Alaska, where you're talking about a lot of conservation efforts, small businesses or small fisheries in this case, right, with Mary Peltola, who's the Democrat running on fish family and freedom. |
| 2:10.6 | Is that? Yeah, right. That is like fish is a huge part of Mary Peltola's initial campaign. But let's start with her, I guess, bigger picture. I feel like |
| 2:18.7 | Mary Peltola is somebody we've been talking about on the podcast for years. Am I crazy? |
| 2:23.3 | Well, since 2022, it's interesting because before 2022, she had very little name recognition in Alaska. |
| 2:33.1 | She ran to replace our long-term congressman, Don Young, when Mr. Young, |
... |
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