By Gram Slattery
WASILLA, Alaska, Oct 13 (Reuters) – With three weeks until the US midterm elections, President Donald Trump on Tuesday campaigned in Alaska, a once reliably Republican state with a competitive Senate race that could help decide the balance of power in Washington.
Polling has shown Democratic candidate Mary Peltola tied or slightly ahead of incumbent Republican Senator Dan Sullivan in a state Trump carried by some 14 percentage points in 2024.
Here, as in much of the United States, the president’s approval rating is underwater, dragged down by rising diesel and gasoline prices and an unpopular war with Iran.
Energy shocks have an outsize impact on the vast Arctic state, where people depend on heating oil to brave the long winters and fuel must be transported across great distances.
Opening for Trump, Sullivan acknowledged that Alaskans face “challenges” when it comes to energy costs. But “the conflict in the Middle East is temporary,” he said. “The true forever war is the national Democrats’ war against Alaska oil and gas and our jobs.”
Trump’s decision to hold a rally in rural Wasilla, a deeply conservative town of roughly 10,000 people about 45 minutes north of Anchorage, the state’s most populous city, fits an emerging pattern.
Trump has taken to campaigning in conservative-leaning parts of competitive states, rather than in more diverse areas with more votes potentially up for grabs. While the strategy could help turn out his most devoted supporters on election day, analysts say, it may do little to bring back independents and political moderates who have soured on his presidency.
Soon after taking the stage at a sports complex surrounded by birch, spruce and aspen trees, Trump vowed the Iran war will “end very soon … and prices will come tumbling down.”
“I’ve done more for this state than any other state in the union,” the president said, highlighting his administration’s efforts to attract Asian investment in an Alaskan pipeline project, fund new power lines and expand high-speed internet access.
At one point, Trump pardoned two local repair shop owners who were convicted of violating the federal Clean Air Act for removing pollution controls on diesel engines.
He also encouraged Republicans to vote by mail – a process he has repeatedly sought to curtail and discredit.
POLLS LEAN TOWARD DEMOCRATS
All 435 seats in the US House of Representatives and 35 of the 100 US Senate seats will be decided on November 3.
Public opinion polls suggest Republicans may lose control of one or both houses of Congress, which would likely limit Trump over the final two years of his presidency.
A New York Times/Siena survey released on October 3 showed Peltola, an Alaska Native who served as the state’s sole US House representative from 2022 to 2025, up 7 percentage points, though some polls point to a much tighter race.
Suzanne Downing, the former communications director for the Alaska Republican Party, said fuel prices were weighing on every aspect of rural life and proving a major drag on Republicans.
Even so, she said, men in particular remained loyal to the president.
“They like Trump, but they feel like they’ve been let down,” said Downing. Campaigning in Wasilla could help the president “reinvigorate” his base, she added.
Lance Million, 68, a retired foreman from Wasilla who showed up early to Tuesday’s rally, expressed dissatisfaction with the Iran war but said he would vote for Sullivan because, “I’m a Republican, a staunch Republican.”
“I’m a little bit disappointed in Trump for not getting it (the war in Iran) over with in a timely manner,” Million said. Still, he said, “we just don’t have any other choice at this point in time because it’s either Sullivan or Peltola.”
Sullivan, a former Alaska attorney general, has been a strong advocate for oil and gas drilling, including in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and has emphasized the state’s strategic importance amid growing US competition with Russia and China over control of the Arctic.
Peltola made history in 2022 by becoming the first Alaska Native and first woman elected to represent the state in the House of Representatives. She cultivated a pragmatic, bipartisan image and focused on local issues like fisheries, but lost her 2024 reelection bid to Republican Nick Begich III.
Responding to previous criticism from Sullivan over her record, Peltola has said she supports oil and gas development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and that she is not a typical national Democrat.
Jo Bennett, a retired state worker from Anchorage in her 60s who said she has voted for both parties, was among a group of women on Tuesday afternoon putting up placards on an overpass over the highway between Anchorage and Wasilla. Together they read: “War is a pain in the ga$.”
At a gas station recently, Bennett said, “I about fell over because it was almost $50 to fill my little, pretty-decent-gas-mileage car.”
(Reporting by Gram Slattery in Wasilla and Bo Erickson in Washington; Writing by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Jesse Mesner-Hage and Stephen Coates)
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