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By Dan Gooding
Associate News Editor
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While some midterms voters elsewhere are focused on familiar key issues, from immigration to inflation, Alaskans are debating salmon runs, bycatch limits, and the future of the state's fishing industry, issues that could help determine whether Democrat Mary Peltola unseats Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan to flip the state's U.S. Senate seat.
Democrats have relatively few realistic opportunities to flip Republican-held Senate seats in 2026, making Alaska one of the most closely-watched contests in the country, alongside others including Maine, Texas, and Michigan, which could decide which party controls the chamber for the rest of President Donald Trump's second term. Alaska has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 2008.
Alaska's unique voter make-up, along with its ranked-choice voting system, means the statewide leadership is not just based on partisan politics.
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"Alaskans, like Americans in every state, are being hammered by higher costs. Gas in rural Alaska is as much as $26 per gallon. Heating fuel is expensive, groceries are expensive, everything is expensive. This is compounded in Alaska, because everything is being shipped up," Aubrey Wieber, executive director of the 907 Initiative, a political watchdog in Alaska which has campaigned against Sullivan, told Newsweek.
He continued: "Unlike other states, there is a secondary, core issue facing Alaskans, which is trawl bycatch. This issue has been bubbling up for years, and really comes from the grassroots. Before politicians were talking about the impact of trawl, Alaska's subsistence, commercial and sport fishers talking about it, and just about every Alaskan fits into one of those three categories."
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Why Fish Matter More in Alaska Than Almost Anywhere Else
The fishing industry is crucial for Alaska, driving a large part of the state's economy while also facing significant threats.
Commercial fishing has historically been one of the state's largest private employers, and among its most valuable exports, supporting fisherman, processors, shipyards, transportation providers, equipment suppliers, and wider coastal communities.
Unlike oil, fishing is spread across dozens of communities, rather than concentrated in a few regions, including Bristol Bay, Kodiak, and Prince William Sound.
"Alaska is culturally tied to salmon. It's a critical food source in rural Alaska where you can't just run to the store and get whatever protein you want. It's a literal livelihood, but it is also an identity," Wieber said. "People in Alaska have a deep respect and appreciation for salmon, and its abundance. But in places like the YK Delta, that abundance is gone. On the Kenai River, perhaps the most famous salmon-fishing river in the country, sport fishermen cannot catch King salmon."
In recent years, fish stocks have been fluctuating, with an overall message from the industry that numbers are on the decline.
In part, larger commercial fishing vessels from outside Alaska, heading up from Seattle and Newport, Oregon, have been blamed, but environmental factors are also at play, including ocean warming and habitat pressures, as well as what is known as bycatch, when species are unintentionally caught up in fishing efforts.
Matt Alward, the president of the United Fishermen of Alaska, told Newsweek that he believed there had been a large social media effort during the election campaign that had sometimes led to misleading and sometimes false information being pushed out.
"While there are some salmon stocks that have been struggling lately, the science points to a large factor being changing environmental conditions in both the ocean and in rivers," he said. "The trawl fisheries have existed for decades alongside other Alaskan fisheries that have been strong and, if anything, the trawl fisheries are more regulated and monitored than ever before."
Lower salmon returns, whatever is causing them, mean lost income, reduced fishing opportunities, subsistence restrictions, and uncertainty for many businesses—all issues that will likely affect voters in the coming days.
What Are Peltola and Sullivan Saying About Fishing?
The fishing industry has formed a core part of Sullivan's and Peltola's campaigns, but the two candidates differ on how they think the industry's issues should be addressed.
Peltola's campaign slogan is "Fish, Family, Freedom," and she has said the state's fisheries, particularly salmon runs, are being harmed by the large industrial trawlers operating in federal waters. She has repeatedly blamed out-of-state trawlers and excessive bycatch for worsening conditions faced by the Alaskan industry.
“Strong fisheries are the lifeblood of our economy, communities, and families. Some of the fisheries that have sustained generations of Alaskans are suffering at the hands of Lower 48 factory trawlers, and we need to take action," Peltola told Newsweek in a statement.
The Senate hopeful continued: "We're in this fight together against out-of-state corporations who export our fish and our profits while leaving our fisheries worse off. Our fight is not against small and mid-sized boats that keep Alaska communities strong; it's against the out-of-state corporate greed that leads to wanton waste and damage to our seafloor."
Peltola wants to ban factory trawling, reduce bycatch, and expand electronic monitoring of fishing vessels. She has also said she wants to increase tribal representation on the North Pacific Fishery Management Council.
Sullivan's message has been built around his record in the U.S. Senate since his election in 2014, arguing he has delivered tangible results for Alaska's fishermen. He has said the industry faces multiple pressures, and that policymakers need better science and better monitoring.
In June, Sullivan introduced the Bycatch Reduction Act that was referred to the Senate's Commerce, Science, and Transportation committee that would "reduce trawl gear impacts on bycatch and seafloor habitat in the Bering Sea, Aleutian Islands, and Gulf of Alaska." The proposed legislation would also "prohibit unsustainable foreign seafood imports" and "establish a Bycatch Mitigation and Habitat Protection Assistance Fund."
Alward told Newsweek that the industry had long struggled with a lack of access to federal programs designed to help food producers—an issue Sullivan had helped address.
"That is starting to change with the newly created Office of Seafood at USDA that Senator Sullivan and the Alaska delegation pushed the administration to create," Alward said. "To make the new office permanent it needs to be codified in statute to which the delegation worked to get language included in both the current Senate and House versions of the Farm Bill that would do that along with giving the seafood industry access to many USDA programs that we have not had access to."
Newsweek reached out to Sullivan's campaign for comment Thursday.
Will Fishing Affect the Alaska Results?
As a core issue for Alaska, it could well be that Senate control is, at least in part, decided on an issue which many Americans have likely thought little about.
While a Data for Progress poll conducted October 8-16 among 694 likely voters saw 3 percent of likely voters rank fisheries and bycatch as a top issue for them during the midterms, polling released by the same organization in March 2025 showed 74 percent of Alaskans wanted the federal government to ban trawling off the Alaska coast.
Wieber told Newsweek that Alaska was "huge and filled with many different communities speaking many different languages," so he could not speak to them all, but he felt the issue had taken center stage in recent years in the wake of Peltola's 2022 House of Representatives campaign.
"Now, the bandwagon is jam-packed. Every candidate wants to talk about trawling, because it's what everyday Alaskans care about," Wieber said, adding that Sullivan had spent 12 years working with the trawling industry.
"That arrangement suddenly became politically untenable, so Sullivan decided to change course and claim to be getting tough on trawl," he said. "This means he's agreeing to fight on Peltola's turf, on an issue she has real credibility around. It is an incredibly narrow needle for him to thread, with a very low chance of success. I think that goes to show just how important this issue is."
With a significant independent voting bloc, both candidates will need to persuade a large cross-section of the state's population that they are the one who can address the fishing industry's issues long-term.
DOJ Sues Alaska Over Duplicate-Name Candidate on Senate Ballot
On Friday, Trump said he told the Department of Justice (DOJ) to sue the state and its election officials over its U.S. Senate ballot which includes two candidates named Dan Sullivan.
The Trump administration has said it aims to stop Alaska from certifying the Senate race result if Sullivan loses to Peltola, amid concern votes for another candidate named Dan Sullivan could have changed the outcome of the ranked-choice vote.
A lawsuit filed by the DOJ on Thursday against Alaska and various election officials alleges that the Republican candidate listed on the ranked-choice ballot as Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. entered the race intending to mislead voters into backing him instead of the incumbent with the same name.
The president has repeatedly accused Democrats of planting Dan J. Sullivan, a retired teacher, to confuse Alaska voters. In a recent social media post, Trump—who has endorsed the incumbent—called his presence on the ballot a "scam" that could threaten Senator Dan Sullivan's potential victory in the closely watched Senate contest.
Dan J. Sullivan was a member of the Alaska Independence Party until it dissolved late last year, only registering as a Republican when he filed his candidacy in the Senate race earlier this year.
Alaska election officials initially agreed that the filing was intended to confuse voters and sought to exclude him from the ballot. But an Alaska trial court ruled against that exclusion and the Alaska Supreme Court summarily affirmed that decision, putting Dan J. Sullivan back on the ballot.
The DOJ's lawsuit would require an investigation into whether Alaskans who cast their vote for Dan J. Sullivan actually intended to vote for the incumbent, and it would allow further procedures to determine what the election result would have been without the alleged voter confusion.
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Newsweek’s reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story. Learn more about Martyn here. Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Anthony Murray and Jason Lemon.
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