Dem
54
GOP
46
As we have repeatedly noted, Donald Trump is getting desperate and doing things he would not normally do, including many things he hates. On Tuesday he visited Alaska, which is a long ways from D.C. He went to Wasilla, Sarah Palin's hometown. Trump held a rally there but didn't say whether he could see Russia. Or whether he waved at his buddy Vladimir P.
Trump went to Alaska to campaign for Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK), who is trailing Mary Peltola (D) in the polls. Trump felt his presence would help Sullivan, who attended Trump's rally, something some other Republicans have avoided. Trump talked for 90 minutes. He pardoned two Alaskans convicted of violating the Clean Air Act, mocked Canada, which has a 1,500-mile border with Alaska, derided transgender people and immigrants, and denigrated what he calls "Dumocrats." Trump also told people to vote for Rep. Nick Begich (R-AK). He endorsed fiery Trumpist Bernadette Wilson, who is running for governor and called on the other two Republicans in the race, Dave Bronson and Treg Taylor, to drop out. In addition, he reiterated that if the Republicans keep control of Congress, he would send every American a check for $5,000. Finally, he said no one has done more for Alaska than Donald J. Trump. He told the audience to pretend he is on the ballot.
Not everyone agreed. There were protests outside the rally as the protesters were trying to draw attention to how Trump's policies, especially the trade war and the Iran War, have hurt Alaskans. Eric Croft, chairman of the Alaska Democratic Party, was at the protests and said: "It's chickensh** for Trump to come up, bypass perfectly good, big auditoriums in Anchorage, with probably double the amount of space." Trump's track record endorsing people in Alaska is not great, even though he carried the state himself three times. In 2022, he backed Kelly Tshibaka, who challenged Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and lost. He also backed Palin, who lost a House race to Peltola.
The mere fact that Trump, who likes to sleep in his own bed every night, would undertake an 8-hour trip to deep-red Alaska to help bail out a senator he barely knows shows how worried he is about the Senate. He is probably also a little bit concerned about the gubernatorial race there, but much less than the Senate one. On Monday, the Cook Political Report changed its rating on the former, saying it now leans toward former state Rep. Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins (D), even with ranked-choice voting, because some voters don't bother to mark second and third choices, thus exhausting their ballots on the second and third rounds. (V)