Alaska Senate: Peltola Puts Seat on Battleground
January 12, 2026 · 8:23 AM EST
Former Rep. Mary Peltola announced her Senate campaign on Monday, making Alaska a competitive race and giving Democrats a better chance at winning the majority in November.
Getting Peltola into the race was a months-long effort for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer considering the former congresswoman probably had a better chance of getting elected governor of the Last Frontier. But instead, she chose to challenge GOP Dan Sullivan in one of the most important Senate races in the country.
Inside Elections is changing the rating of the Alaska Senate race from Solid Republican to Lean Republican.
Despite her statewide victory in 2022, Peltola will start the race as an underdog. Alaska is still a Republican state, where the GOP has a 9.4-point Baseline advantage and where President Donald Trump finished ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris by 13 points. And Democrats have only won one Senate election in 50 years. That was Mark Begich in 2008, against a scandal-tarred Sen. Ted Stevens, and he lost to Sullivan six years later. But Peltola overperformed in her 2024 re-election loss and the national political environment could help push her over the top. Republicans will have to take the race seriously.
Peltola’s candidacy makes Democrats’ narrow path to gaining four seats a little wider. But each step along the path to the majority is still difficult.
North Carolina looks like the easiest win for Democrats with the political environment and open seat, and yet the party has only won one Senate race in the Tar Heel State in the last 25 years. And as a Republican in a Democratic state, Maine Sen. Susan Collins is endangered, but Democrats have never shown an ability to defeat her in Senate races in the past.
In Ohio, Democrats are relying on former Sen. Sherrod Brown to defeat appointed Sen. Jon Husted, even though Brown just lost re-election in 2024. But similar to Brown, Peltola has shown she can win in a difficult state.
Without any of those states, Democrats would have to win in Iowa, where they’ve got a competitive primary without a proven statewide votergetter, or Texas, which has been an expensive fool’s errand for the party in recent years.
Those scenarios also assume that Democrats hold all of their own seats, including tough holds in Georgia and Michigan, which aren’t guaranteed.
But the bottom line is that while Republicans still have the advantage to hold the majority, Peltola gives Democrats an opportunity in a state that wasn’t a serious race last week.