PALMER, Alaska — Jean Oldham had just put $6-a-gallon gas into a small sedan, and she was doing the math out loud.
“It was, like, a lot of money,” Oldham said. “And I’m like, this is just a little car, you know? What happens if you’re driving one of those monster trucks?”
Those big rigs run on diesel, which costs more still — driving up the price of pretty much everything they haul into Alaska.
Statewide, gas averages $5.07 a gallon, according to AAA — 74 cents higher than the national average and $1.15 higher than a year ago. With seven weeks until Election Day, that number has helped turn a reliably Republican Senate seat into a toss-up and put Democrats within reach of a majority.
And Palmer is on the road system; 82% of Alaska communities are not. In those remote places, boats or small planes bring in food and supplies. Electricity comes from generators that run on diesel. Gas for cars and trucks is expensive: In late August, in the northwestern village of Shungnak, a gallon of gas cost $26.82.
All of it helps explain why the cost of fuel dominated a recent high-stakes debate between Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan and former Rep. Mary Peltola, a Democrat, that had been billed as a debate about fisheries. That’s because fuel is the fishing industry’s problem too. Alaska’s $5 billion-a-year fishery is the state’s largest private sector employer, and expenses are climbing while profitability falls.
“This is the No. 1 cost for all fishermen. This war in Iran is driving up our gas and diesel prices,” Peltola said, noting repeatedly that Sullivan had voted for the war 10 times.
Sullivan, who has been a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump’s policies, acknowledged that “people are struggling” but accused Peltola of consistently voting “with Lower 48 allies of hers against our interests” during two terms in the House.
Still, he acknowledged, the price of fuel has made life harder. “It is a challenge,” Sullivan told the crowd in Kodiak.
That challenge is one reason why the race is close in a state Trump has carried three times.
For Democrats, the tantalizing possibility that Peltola could win and hand them the Senate has spawned an unprecedented wave of volunteers — more than 15,000, her campaign says.
On a recent Sunday morning, about a dozen of them knocked on doors in Palmer and neighboring Wasilla, the hometown of former governor and vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.
“We know it’s going to be very close, and we’re trying to motivate each and every person we can to get out and vote,” said Greg DeArmond, a volunteer canvasser working with the Alaska Democratic Party and Peltola’s campaign.
Every campaign is a turnout game. In Alaska, it is also expensive in a way that it isn’t in a lot of other places. Reaching voters in off-road communities means a plane or a boat, and the fuel costs driving the discontent are the same ones driving up the price of getting there.
Polls and interviews show voters have largely lost patience with promises that prices will come down when the war with Iran ends. They want answers and relief from the candidates they are deciding between.
Peltola told MS NOW she remembers campaigning in May, when “people were still trying to have this Sophie’s choice: food or heat. And it’s going to be exponentially worse this winter if we do not resolve the war in Iran.”
Houses must be heated. Food has to be flown, driven or barged in. Cars have to get people to the jobs that pay for it all. And all of it is getting more expensive.
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