Democrats are getting the news they’d been hoping for out of Alaska, with former US Rep. Mary Peltola launching a Senate campaign on Monday morning. The one-and-a-half-term former congresswoman was elected at-large from the small-population state in a 2022 special election and reelected that fall, before losing in 2024. She had been hotly pursued by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer as Democrats’ best prospect in a state that last elected a Democrat to the Senate in 2008. Peltola will run against Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan, who announced last year he’d seek a third term. Her agenda, she says, is “fish, family and freedom.”Peltola invokes the legacies of longtime Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens and Rep. Don Young, both Republicans, whom she says used to put the state over politics.

Source: CNN January 13, 2026 03:08 UTC