In a brief “tele-rally” Oct. 21, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump urged Alaskans to vote for U.S. House candidate Nick Begich, saying that control of the closely divided House could come down to a single vote.
“Control of the House of Representatives is so important, and Alaska, you could very well be the vote,” he said.
Begich is seeking to unseat incumbent Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola, and polling shows the candidates are running close together.
Most seats in the 435-person U.S. House tilt strongly Democratic or Republican; Alaska, which favored Trump by 10 percentage points in 2020, voted for Peltola, a Democrat, in the 2022 U.S. House election, making it one of just eight Trump-voting House districts represented by a Democrat.
“I love your state. Your state is good to me, we won it twice. … Now I want to see if we can win one for Nick,” Trump said, referring to his victories in Alaska in 2016 and 2020.
Two years ago, Trump visited Alaska to campaign for Republican candidates, including then-U.S. House candidate Sarah Palin, who competed against Begich in the 2022 U.S. House race. Former governor Palin finished second in that race, behind Peltola. Begich was third.
This year, Trump initially endorsed Republican Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom as his preferred House candidate, but when Dahlstrom withdrew from the race following a third-place finish in the August primary, Trump switched his endorsement to Begich.
By phone, Trump occasionally sounded as if he were reading from a prepared script. He said that his grandfather lived in Alaska at the time of the Klondike Gold Rush. Historical records say his grandfather spent time in Seattle and Bennett and Whitehorse in Canada’s Yukon Territory, survived a shipwreck near Kodiak Island and traveled along the Yukon River.
The candidate also reiterated his support for reopening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. Both Begich and Peltola have said they support drilling in the refuge.
A January 2021 federal lease sale drew no interest from major oil companies; the state was the biggest bidder at the sale and has spent close to a couple million dollars on its legal fight to hold onto the leases amid legal questions about the sale and its environmental review.
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