Vice President JD Vance told reporters on Monday that the U.S. Senate race in Alaska is competitive, despite President Donald Trump winning the state by 13 percentage points in 2024.
Vance made the comments before departing for Alaska to campaign for two-term incumbent Sen. Dan S. Sullivan (R-AK).
“It’s just a reality of the politics of the state,” Vance said when asked about the competitiveness of the state. “They obviously have the kind of weird ranked choice voting system that I don’t fully understand, but you know, I think that whether this was going to be a blue wave or a red wave year, you’re going to have a competitive Senate race in Alaska. That’s been true historically, and I suspect it’s going to be true this year too.”
Sullivan is seeking reelection against not just the Democratic nominee, former Rep. Mary Peltola, but also two other Republicans: Dan J. Sullivan and Gerald Heikes. The top four candidates from the nonpartisan primary run against each other in the general election.
Sullivan, the incumbent senator, won a second term in 2020 by 13 points, but is, on average, in a statistical tie with Peltola this year, according to RealClearPolitics.
On Monday, Vance was also pressed on whether Alaskan voters could be certain the Alaska liquefied natural gas project that Trump announced last week would happen after South Korea disputed the president’s claim that it has committed to spending $200 billion on U.S. energy infrastructure projects.
“The pipeline is something that we really want to see happen, and a lot of our Asian friends want to see happen as well,” he said. “Obviously, you still have got to work out some of the details, and the South Koreans, you know, have spoken to that. But when there’s a demand for this stuff, and there really is strong demand for American natural gas, I think we’re going to be able to get it done.”
During the impromptu, informal press conference on the tarmac, Vance also defended the Trump administration spending $20 million in federal taxpayer dollars on public service announcements promoting the president before the Nov. 3 midterm elections as nothing “unusual or unorthodox.”
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“If you look historically, you know, go back to the Obama administration with the Affordable Care Act, you have the people’s government using tax dollars to advertise about what the government is doing,” he said. “It’s part of actually, I think, living in a constitutional republic. You have to be honest with the American people about what you’re doing, about what’s going on, and part of that is getting out there and telling the message.”