The 2026 United States Senate election in Alaska was held on November 3, 2026, to elect a member of the United States Senate to represent the state of Alaska. Republican incumbent Dan S. Sullivan is seeking a third term. He is being challenged by Democratic former representative Mary Peltola. The election is conducted under ranked-choice voting if no candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round.
A nonpartisan primary election was held on August 18 to determine the four candidates in the general election. Peltola and Sullivan were the first to advance with 49.5% and 41.4% of the vote respectively, followed by Republican former teacher Dan J. Sullivan and Republican perennial candidate Gerald Heikes.
Dan J. Sullivan's candidacy drew allegations of being a spoiler due to having the same first and last name as the incumbent, but he was allowed to remain on the ballot by the state Supreme Court and was listed as unaffiliated (although he had originally filed for candidacy as a Republican). The United States Department of Justice filed a lawsuit to block the election results if Dan S. Sullivan loses by a small margin, arguing this outcome could result from him sharing a name with another candidate. The lawsuit is under appeal in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. If elected, Peltola would be the first Democrat to win a U.S. Senate election in Alaska since Mark Begich in 2008, the first Alaska Native senator, and the first senator from the state to have previously served in the U.S. House of Representatives since its admission to the Union in 1959.
Candidates
Republican Party
Advanced to general
- Dan S. Sullivan, incumbent U.S. senator
- Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., retired educator (no relation to the incumbent)
- Gerald L. Heikes, sheetrocker and perennial candidate
Eliminated in primary
- Dustin Darden, perennial candidate
- Fred C. Grauberger, retired motor vehicle operator
- Richard Benedict Mayers, white supremacist and perennial candidate
- Heather McElwain, editor
Withdrawn
- Christopher Miklos, businessman
Democratic Party
Advanced to general
- Mary Peltola, former U.S. representative from Alaska's at-large congressional district (2022–2025)
Withdrew after advancing to general
- David Leslie, LGBTQ+ activist
Eliminated in primary
- Carol Hafner, former flight attendant and perennial candidate
Withdrawn
- Ann Diener, sales executive at the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
- William Lee Hunt, former Fairbanks District Attorney's Office administrative clerk and independent candidate for president in 2024 and 2028 (running for Alaska state senate)
Libertarian Party
Eliminated in primary
- Scott Kohlhaas, consultant
Green Party
Eliminated in primary
- Richard Grayson, author and perennial candidate
Alaskan Party
Eliminated in primary
- Earl D. "Skip" Southworth, former Unalaska city councilor
Independents
Eliminated in primary
- Sidney "Sid" Hill, political gadfly and candidate for U.S. Senate in 2014 and 2022
- Reece J. Roberts, paramedic
- Shirley Saucerman, medical doctor
Primary election
Under Alaska's voting system, all candidates, regardless of party, run on the same primary ballot. The top four candidates in the primary advance to the general election, which is conducted using ranked-choice voting if no candidate wins more than 50% of the vote during the first round.
Background
Incumbent Republican Dan S. Sullivan announced his run for re-election in early 2025. He was first elected in 2014, defeating Mark Begich, the most recent Democrat to represent Alaska in the U.S. Senate. He was last re-elected in 2020, prior to the implementation of Alaska's ranked-choice voting system. Facing few obvious swing state targets to regain the Senate majority in 2026, Democrats began looking towards more Republican-leaning states, such as Ohio and Texas, as potential targets. Among these states was Alaska, where Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer heavily courted former U.S. Representative Mary Peltola, the last Democrat to win any statewide election in Alaska, to run for Senate. Peltola narrowly lost her congressional seat in 2024, and had considered running for either Senate or governor, but she ultimately decided to enter the Senate race in early 2026, setting up the race between her and Sullivan.
In July 2026, the Alaska Division of Elections moved 3,048 voters to "inactive" on its voter rolls based in part on flawed and outdated federal data indicating they might not be citizens. The Alaska Division of Motor Vehicles often includes citizens who do not reach back out to update their citizenship status to the DMV after naturalization. Historically, the Alaska DMV provided 300 names every three months for verification. Voters can still vote with a 'Question ballot' attesting that they are citizens but have to fill out additional paperwork for their vote to count. 700 Alaskans were able to restore their status on the active list as of August 12, 2026. The department said it was able to deregister 100 voters who were not citizens and who wished to be taken off the list. They may have been some of the noncitizens added by mistake by DMV employees. The state was accused of violating federal law by some state legislators and the state chapter of the ACLU by conducting a "systematic purge" of active voter rolls within 90 days of an election.
Candidacy of Dan J. Sullivan and controversy of names
Daniel James Sullivan Jr. (born June 1957) is a retired teacher and United States Forest Service employee from Petersburg, Alaska, who filed to run as a Republican three days before the filing deadline. Daniel James Sullivan and Daniel Scott Sullivan are unrelated to each other and are both unrelated to former Anchorage mayor Daniel Albert Sullivan (in office 2009–2015).
In an interview with the Petersburg Pilot, Dan J. Sullivan stated that he had been considering running against the incumbent U.S. senator for 12 years, and remarked that he finally decided to run after the Senator's lack of opposition to the Anti-Weaponization Fund. Senator Sullivan said this was "an effort to confuse Alaskans" and "dirty politics" by Democrats, calling Dan J. Sullivan a "sham candidate". This was denied by Dan J. Sullivan, who called himself a "pragmatic Republican centrist". It was also denied by Mary Peltola's campaign, the Alaska Democratic Party, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Senator Sullivan threatened legal action if the Lieutenant Governor of Alaska did not remove Dan J. Sullivan from the ballot.
Dan J. Sullivan grew up in the Chicago metropolitan area, and has lived in Southeast Alaska since 1980. He worked for the United States Forest Service in his early career before beginning a career as an elementary school teacher. He taught in elementary schools for over 20 years before retiring. He was appointed to the city of Petersburg's Public Safety Advisory Board in December 2021, and he served in that position until October 2022, and he is listed on the Petersburg government website as "Dan Sullivan". He stated that he was a member of the Alaskan Independence Party from when he moved to Alaska in 1980 until the party's dissolution in late 2025.
Dan J. Sullivan's initial campaign announcement stated that he was "focused on unseating the incumbent, putting Alaska first, and restoring accountability, common sense, and public service to Washington, D.C." He later described his political philosophy as "a pragmatic Republican centrist" similar to Lisa Murkowski, with influence from Rand Paul. Incumbent U.S. Senator Daniel Scott Sullivan argued in an early June 2026 interview with CNN that "[Daniel James Sullivan's] whole purpose of running is to confuse Alaskans, to make him, make them think – Alaskan voters – that somehow he's me, so they could rig the vote in favor of Mary Peltola." An analysis of Federal Election Commission records by KTUU-TV showed that he had donated to Peltola's previous campaigns, including $100 in 2022 and $30 in 2024. KTUU reported, "That financial history is the extent of the documented link between the Petersburg Sullivan and the Peltola campaign." His initial press release and website design were supported by political strategist Amber Lee, who has previously worked with Democratic campaigns in Alaska. Lee has publicly spoken in favor of Peltola's candidacy, including in a January 2026 interview with The Hill.
The Wall Street Journal reported that weeks before the election, polls showed that approximately one third of voters likely to vote in the primary election could not distinguish the two candidates. Dan J. Sullivan's candidacy was the subject of legal debate, which as of June 27, 2026 advanced to the Alaska Supreme Court. In its initial response to Sullivan's candidacy filing, the Alaska Division of Elections stated that Sullivan's name would appear on the ballot as "Sullivan, Dan J. (Registered Republican)".
The Alaska Director of Elections ordered Sullivan's name removed from the ballot, saying his candidacy "was not filed in order to declare an actual good-faith candidacy for the office of United States Senator, but was instead filed with a purpose to confuse or mislead and to thereby compromise the ballot's fairness or neutrality", a decision he appealed. On June 26, Anchorage Superior Court judge Thomas A. Matthews reversed the Division of Elections' decision to exclude Sullivan from the primary ballot. Matthews' decision ruled that the "good-faith" standard for ballot access was not supported by Alaska law, the Division of Elections' regulations, or Article One, Section 3 of the United States Constitution. On July 2, the Alaska Supreme Court affirmed the decision, ordering Sullivan's name to be listed on the August 18 primary ballot. On June 29, the Division of Elections released a sample ballot that distinguished between the two Sullivans by listing Dan J. Sullivan as "Sullivan, Daniel J. Jr.", with no party affiliation listed (despite Sullivan filing as a Republican) and using "Daniel" rather than "Dan" for him and adding "Jr.", and identifying Dan S. Sullivan as "Dan S. Sullivan (Registered Republican) Incumbent", specifically identifying him as the incumbent, which they had not done for any other incumbent for at least 10 years.
Campaign
According to most predictors, Peltola's January entry into the race immediately made the race competitive. She still faced significant hurdles, such as Sullivan's incumbency, the lack of a prominent Republican challenger, the unpopularity of the national Democratic Party in Alaska, and a reduction in cross-party support. Lisa Murkowski, Alaska's other U.S. Senator and a noted moderate Republican, had endorsed Peltola in her 2022 and 2024 bids for U.S. House, but she endorsed Dan S. Sullivan in this race instead. However, as Trump's unpopularity grew, especially as the 2026 Iran war began and continued, Peltola's chances of flipping the Senate seat grew.
Over the course of the primary campaign, a super PAC called Fair Deal Alaska, registered to a virtual office address in Wasilla, spent around $770,000 promoting Green Party candidate Richard Grayson and Democrat Carol Hafner in what the Alaska Beacon and the Anchorage Daily News described as an apparent attempt to dilute support for Peltola in the general election. Another PAC called American Democracy Project spent over $240,000 to promote Democrat David Leslie. A similar group called Right for Alaska spent $1.2 million promoting Republican Gerald Heikes and Alaskan Party candidate Earl "Skip" Southworth, who were considered more likely to draw support from Dan S. Sullivan. Both Grayson and Leslie expressed concern about the outside spending on their behalf to the Anchorage Daily News. Grayson—a satirical candidate living in Arizona—said that he supported Peltola and pledged to withdraw if he advanced to the general election.
Endorsements
Scott Kohlhaas (L)
Mary Peltola (D)
- Pete Buttigieg, former secretary of transportation (2021–2025)
- Kamala Harris, former vice president of the United States (2021–2025) (endorsement rejected by candidate)
- Elissa Slotkin, Michigan (2025–present)
- Adam Kinzinger, former IL-16 (2013–2023) (Republican)
- Tom Begich, former senate minority leader (2019–2023) from district J (2017–2023) and 2026 gubernatorial candidate
- Eric Croft, chair of the Alaska Democratic Party (2025–present)
- David Hogg, former vice chair of the Democratic National Committee (2025)
- Richard Grayson, writer and candidate for this seat (Green)
- Martin Sheen, actor
- Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action
- Alaska AFL-CIO
- American Federation of Government Employees
- Association of Flight Attendants
- National Education Association
- SEIU 775
- Elect Democratic Women
- EMILY's List
- End Citizens United
- J Street
- Jewish Democratic Council of America
- National Organization for Women PAC
- Progressive Victory
- Reproductive Freedom for All
- Sealaska Corporation (previously endorsed Dan S. Sullivan)
Dan S. Sullivan (R)
- Tara Sweeney, former assistant secretary of the interior for Native American affairs (2018–2021)
- Donald Trump, president of the United States (2017–2021, 2025–present)
- Lisa Murkowski, Alaska (2002–present)
- Nick Begich III, AK-AL (2025–present)
- Lyman Hoffman, state senator from district S (1991–1993, 1995–present) (Democratic)
- John Lincoln, former state representative from the 40th district (2018–2021) (Independent)
- Gary Stevens, Senate president (2009–2013, 2023–present) from district C (2003–present)
- Bill Thomas, former state representative from the 5th district (2005–2013)
- Brian Hove, Republican national committeeman for Alaska
- International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 959