Vice President Vance is headed to Alaska for a midterm rally against the backdrop of the red state’s highly competitive Senate race. The Trump 47 Committee, a joint fundraising group connected to President Trump’s Save America PAC and the Republican National Committee (RNC), will host the Monday rally in Fairbanks, the RNC announced…
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Vance rallies for a senator trailing in a poll his own party's pollster helped write.
As it ran on the front
Vice President Vance is flying to Fairbanks on Monday to rally for Senator Dan Sullivan. The polling says the race is Sullivan's to lose, and as of September 17 it may already be lost: an AARP poll conducted jointly by the Republican firm Fabrizio Ward and the Democratic firm Impact Research found Sullivan trailing former Representative Mary Peltola, 41 percent to 46, with 7 percent undecided or elsewhere. Both sides of that polling operation signed the same number. That is not spin from one bench.
Start the story earlier, in July. Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, a 37-year-old former state representative, spent four days covering 450 miles of the Yukon River in a 24-foot aluminum skiff, through Koyukon Athabascan country, past Deg Hit'an villages, into Yup'ik country along the lower river — eleven villages in all, most with fewer than 300 residents, and fewer still who could recall the last time a candidate for governor, of any party, had come through. He is a Democrat. He went anyway.…
…(cont) The bill for not showing up came due at the other end of the ballot. ABC reported on September 1 that Democrats had consolidated behind one name. The Republican side did not. By September 28, the ballot math was set in both statewide races: three Republicans splitting one column, one Democrat holding the other, after the second Democrat in each race stepped aside.
That is the map Vance is flying into. A Senate seat where a bipartisan poll — Republican firm and Democratic firm, same memo — has the Republican down five points before his own party's vice president lands to campaign for him.
The Vice President of the United States does not fly to Fairbanks for states that are safe. He flies to the ones coming apart. The polling memo and the travel schedule are reading from the same page; the only question left is whether the voters read it the same way in November.
In July, before Vance boarded a plane for Alaska, Kreiss-Tomkins had already made that trip once, in a boat, alone.
“They don't send the Vice President to a race that's locked up. They send him to the one where the floor's going, and this floor's going in two races at once — the Senate seat and the governor's mansion both, and the poll saying so has a Republican firm's name right next to the Democratic one. That's not one side's spin; that's the rally showing up to a fire both sides already called in.”
“This is a show of strength, not panic — the Vice President doesn't fly to places his party's already lost. It's one poll, margin of error, and Alaska's voted Republican in every statewide race since — well, since the last time it didn't. Did I say panic? Nobody said panic.”
The receipts
Democrats are running an average of 11.5 points ahead of their 2024 baseline across 2026 special elections MultiState Elections, 2026 special-election tracking
A Democratic upset is brewing in Alaska’s governor’s race as Trump’s popularity cratersSupport for 37-year-old Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins could upend the governor’s race in the heavily Republican state This July, Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins spent four days and 450 miles (725km) wending his way down the Yukon River in a 24-ft Alweld skiff, a flat-bottomed aluminum boat built for shallow Alaska rivers. Starting in Koyukon…
· Sullivan trails Peltola in Alaska Senate contest: AARP poll from the morgue, 17 Sep 2026
· Alaska Democrat drops out of governor race, citing funding concerns from the morgue, 29 Aug 2026
· Alaska ballot situation puts three Republicans against one Democrat in two statewide races from the morgue, 28 Sep 2026
· Democrats aim to unite behind one candidate in Alaska governor's race from the morgue, 1 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.