As early voting opens in Alaska’s U.S. House race, current and former candidates talk about what’s at stake

Seattle has more power in the U.S. House of Representatives than the state of Alaska.

And yet, ahead of this year’s U.S. House elections, there’s as much at stake with Alaska’s race than all four of the contests in King County combined.

The vast majority of the 435 seats in the House are firmly Democratic or firmly Republican. Alaska is among a dwindling number of exceptions that could go in any direction.

More than that, it’s one of just five places in the country that voted for Donald Trump as president in 2020 yet elected a Democrat to the House in 2022.

The House is almost equally divided between Republicans and Democrats, and in a series of interviews and speeches throughout this year, current and former candidates for Alaska’s House seat have said the race could help decide which party controls the House.

[Early voting starts for Alaska’s Aug. 20 primary election]

In turn, that could affect the country’s direction on issues ranging from abortion to oil development to international affairs.

“We are down to the tiniest margins we’ve ever seen, like three or four people in the House and one in the Senate,” said Rep. Mary Peltola, the incumbent Democrat, in a January interview.

Control of the House will impact whoever wins the presidential race. A Republican-controlled House will support Donald Trump or act as a brake on Kamala Harris. The opposite is true if Democrats control the chamber.

“That’s exactly how I see it,” said Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom, a Republican candidate for House this year.

“I have President Trump’s endorsement. And so what that tells people is that when President Trump needs to talk to a congressperson from Alaska, he wants to call me, and he’s going to pick up the phone and call me, and he knows that we can work together, and we’re going to get things done together. You know, I think that’s important,” she said.

The candidates for the House include the Democratic incumbent, four Republicans, three nonpartisan candidates, one who didn’t declare a party, an additional Democrat, a member of the Alaskan Independence Party and a member of the No Labels Party.

Thousands of Alaskans are already voting absentee, and early voting begins Monday.

Election Day, for those who haven’t already voted, is Aug. 20. The four candidates who get the most votes will advance to the November general election.

[See Alaska Beacon’s survey of candidates for U.S. House ahead of the August primary]

Republican challenger Nick Begich said he thinks Alaska is at a “pivotal point” in its history.

“There’s really two camps as I see it,” he said in February. “There’s one camp that believes that Alaskans have a role as guardians of the state, that development should be diminished or eliminated. There’s another group of Alaskans who believe that our responsibility in Alaska extends to increasing development and that we have a role to play in our nation … as a source for critical minerals, base metals, energy in the form of oil and gas.”

And what’s at stake extends beyond what’s happening within Alaska itself.

“This time around, they’ve got some major issues they’re facing,” said Santa Claus, a socialist-leaning independent who finished sixth in the 2022 special U.S. House primary election.

He proceeded to rattle off a partial list: Social Security and Medicare; Russia and Ukraine; issues of abortion and contraception; student loans; education and libraries; LGBTQIA-Two Spirit issues, including with sports; wearing masks in schools should the pandemic or some other medical issue arise; gun control; cannabis and hemp; and oil and gas mining, fracking, pipelines and carbon capture.

“Issues like that, I think they’re all important, because this election is going to have a profound impact on how the American people view and deal and cope with those particular issues,” he said.

Democratic incumbent tries to focus on Alaska topics

Peltola is a Democrat who was elected twice in 2022: Once in a special election to fill the remainder of Republican Rep. Don Young’s term after his sudden death, and then again for a two-year term of her own.

Through March, she voted with her fellow Democrats on 88% of the votes in the House, a figure that appears to be high, but is the fourth-lowest among House Democrats.

Since Harris replaced Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee, Peltola has declined to endorse her, in part because the congresswoman isn’t sure that Harris would support oil drilling within the state.

Like her Republican opponents, Peltola has repeatedly voted in favor of measures to allow more drilling here. The support hasn’t been universal — she voted present on one high-profile Arctic drilling bill because of a clause she disapproved of — but that was an unusual exception.

Peltola has also bucked her Democratic colleagues by voting against gun control measures and this year became the first Democratic member of Congress since 2020 to be endorsed by the National Rifle Association.

Speaking in January, Peltola said that in places where one member of Congress represents an entire state, “it doesn’t give the one representative for the entire state much latitude to be championing issues that aren’t directly Alaska-related.”

“Alaska is so big and so young that whoever is in the position that I’m in — in Congress — we are up to our eyeballs in issues,” she said.

That’s why, she said, she’s focused on fisheries issues, on energy topics and on consumer issues like her opposition to the grocery-store merger of Albertsons and Kroger.

That has upset some Democratic voters, who want her to take a stand against Israel’s attacks that have killed civilians in Gaza.

A Peltola fundraiser in Juneau was disrupted by a pro-Gaza speaker, and Claus, who previously endorsed Peltola, withdrew his support over the issue.

“I care about international issues of course,” Peltola said. “I want peace and prosperity across the world. But Alaskans sent me to Washington, D.C., to champion Alaska issues.”

Significant differences on reproductive health

Peltola differs from her principal Republican competitors on reproductive issues. Since entering office, she’s co-sponsored bills that would prohibit restrictions on abortion, birth control, and in vitro fertilization.

Some Republicans have expressed interest in using a 19th-century law, the Comstock Act, to restrict birth control and abortions, and Republican control of the House or the presidency may cause a significant change in existing federal policy.

Republican Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom said in an interview that she is “pro life with exceptions of rape, incest and life of the mother,” but that abortion is “best left up to the states.” Republican candidate Nick Begich has said that while he supports the idea of allowing states to restrict abortion at a local level, he also would eliminate Medicaid funding for the practice and stop pharmacies from distributing mifepristone, a drug used in many abortions.

Among the nine lesser-known candidates in the race, Alaskan Independence Party candidate John Wayne Howe referred to abortion as “child murder” but said he doesn’t think Congress will act to restrict abortion.

“The people will not at the current time quit killing their children, as they are oppressed, and see only small value even in their own life,” he wrote.

Republican Gerald Heikes is strongly against abortion rights, saying in June that “there are no Christians in the Democratic Party” because of the party’s stance on abortion.

“When you vote for people that believe in the sacrifice of children, in abortion and abortion bills, you’re responsible for that innocent blood,” he said.

For Republicans, hopes of helping Trump — and oil

Heikes and another Republican candidate, Matthew Salisbury, haven’t received significant amounts of financial donations or support from local or national Republican Party officials.

They could nevertheless advance to the November general election under Alaska’s top-four primary, which winnows the candidate field to four people, regardless of party.

Howe, of the Alaskan Independence Party, could also be one of the four. During a May interview, he said he sees Alaska as a puppet of the federal government and believes the federal income tax system should be replaced with a program that allows people to choose which programs to support.

“Ideally, we would vote with our funds, if we didn’t have this tax structure that we do,” he said. “Ideally, all of the oil money that comes into the state would be given to individuals first, and then the individual would have a chance to state which department the money goes to.”

That isn’t a view shared by the two leading Republican candidates, Begich and Dahlstrom. Both have received substantial support from within and without the state, but each has expressed similar views about the state’s need to be allowed to drill for oil and mine for minerals in order to grow its economy and benefit its residents.

While Peltola may support oil drilling in Alaska, her Democratic counterparts in Congress and the White House generally do not, Begich and Dahlstrom have said, and regardless of Peltola’s views, electing her could result in further restrictions on development here.

“Oil and fossil fuels are and always will be central to Alaska’s economy. We have an abundant supply — very much contrary to the media spin saying otherwise — that we are not tapping into due to leftist policies pushed by Joe Biden and Mary Peltola,” Dahlstrom wrote in response to a question from the Alaska Beacon.

Both Begich and Dahlstrom have expressed hopes that Donald Trump will be reelected as president. During his first term in office, Trump signed the bill that opened parts of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, and he has pledged to renew that program, which was stopped by the Biden administration.

Begich has received support from members of the House Freedom Caucus, a group of more conservative Republicans who are sometimes at odds with the House’s current Republican leadership. Dahlstrom, meanwhile, has received support from the Republican House leadership and has Trump’s endorsement.

At the state Republican convention and in local meetings since, Republican officials within Alaska have thrown their support behind Begich, endorsing him for House even if it puts them at odds with Trump.

Dahlstrom, during an interview in late July, said she doesn’t think those local officials speak for all Republican voters in the state.

Begich, a firm opponent of ranked choice voting, has said that if he finishes behind Dahlstrom in the race, he will drop out in order to consolidate support behind her. Dahlstrom hasn’t made a similar promise.

Originally published by the Alaska Beacon, an independent, nonpartisan news organization that covers Alaska state government.