Former President Donald Trump prepares to speak in front of a crowd at the Alaska Airlines Center in Anchorage on Saturday, July 9, 2022. (Photo by James Brooks/Alaska Beacon)
In a brief “tele-rally” Monday evening, 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 both candidates are running close together. The same polls show that the other two candidates in the race, John Wayne Howe of the Alaskan Independence Party and imprisoned, non-Alaskan Democratic candidate Eric Hafner, trail Peltola and Hafner by wide margins.
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. I won every primary … everything, and now I want to see if we can win one for Nick,” Trump said, referring to the way he won 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. 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.
Trump’s remarks Monday were his first in support of Begich since a prepared endorsement was released in September.
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, survived a shipwreck near Kodiak Island and traveled along the Yukon River.
“It’s a great place. My grandfather, he spent a lot of time in — he loved Alaska,” Trump said.
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 lease sale drew little interest from oil companies.
In discussing ANWR, Trump repeated an incorrect claim about the refuge’s oil potential and denounced the Biden administration’s decision to cancel oil leases in the refuge.
“What a shame. We’re going to end it very quickly,” he said of the Biden administration’s restriction.
“It’s gonna happen very quickly. We’re gonna tap the liquid gold that’s under there, and we’re gonna drill, baby drill. We’re going to make Alaska rich and prosperous with jobs all over the place,” Trump said.
After Trump’s remarks, Begich said he will “proudly work with President Trump as the 47th president of the United States” and urged supporters to vote early.
“This year, you never know what’s going to happen on Election Day. It’s Alaska. The roads can ice up. It can snow. It did today in Fairbanks, and voting didn’t open up this morning in Fairbanks, so make sure you’re banking that vote,” he said.
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