Dem former Congresswoman Mary Peltola on Monday officially launched her bid to take on incumbent Republican Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan in November, another really freaking strong recruit for the Ds on a must-win Senate map. Peltola lost to current at-large Alaska Congressman Nick Begich III by 2.04 percent in 2024 while outperforming Kamala Harris by over 11 percent.
Which means you may want to consider this race less of a “forces Republicans to spend where they thought they had it safe” and more like one on the same tier as North Carolina, Maine, and Ohio as a can-and-must-flip seat for Dems. Peltola’s got a brand, cross-partisan appeal as Lisa Murkowski endorsed her in both of her 2022 races, and Alaska’s low population with only a handful of media markets makes it cheap to spend in relative even to Iowa or other Senate Dem reach states.