The True Forever War

The sentence the paper has come to Alaska for was said on October 13 in a hockey arena in Wasilla, with the President on the stage and several hundred people turned away at the door. Senator Dan Sullivan, a retired Marine colonel in his twelfth year in the Senate, told the crowd: "The conflict in the Middle East is temporary. The true forever war is the national Democrats' war against Alaska oil and gas and our jobs." The President followed with a promise that the war would end "very soon." The paper has heard that promise before; the President made it on February 28, when the war began, and said it would take four to six weeks. It is now eight months. Diesel in Alaska is $6.49 this morning by AAA's count, against $4.08 a year ago; heating fuel was eight dollars a gallon in August; gasoline is $4.83, a dollar over last October. Twenty-odd American service members are dead. And the Senator has voted no on every single measure to end the war or to make the President ask Congress to continue it, fourteen in all, the last on September 24, when four of his Republican colleagues, one of them Lisa Murkowski, voted yes. His reason: "A war powers vote is about removing American forces from a region, and when there are troops in contact, I don't believe in doing that." That is a serious position and the paper will treat it as one. The paper would only ask the Senator to pick. Either the war is temporary, in which case a vote to end it is a vote for the calendar he says he believes in, or it is a war in which there are troops in contact and must not be ended by Congress, in which case it is not temporary, it is the thing he said the Democrats were waging. He cannot have the forever war be the other guy's when he is the one voting to continue his own.

Now the file, because the Senator's whole campaign is that his opponent lies about it, and the paper would like to establish what is true. On September 10, 2025, Senator Sullivan voted, with Senator Murkowski and 49 other Republicans, to table the Schumer amendment that would have required the Justice Department to publish the Epstein records, and it died 51 to 49, with Hawley and Paul the only Republicans who would not table it. His office's explanation was that Schumer had slipped it into the defense bill "knowing full well it would be stripped out," and that he was "using Epstein's atrocious crimes as a political pawn." Senator Murkowski's explanation was that it was "a political stunt" and also: "Just, just release these Epstein files. Just get this stuff out there." Two months later the Senate passed the release bill by unanimous consent, which is to say nobody objected, which is the sense in which the Senator "voted" for it. At the one televised debate, on October 15, he said: "One of the essential lies of the Peltola campaign was this idea that I supported not releasing the Epstein files. It's ridiculous. I voted to release the Epstein files and protect the victims." The paper has now read this sentence from senators in Ohio, Kansas and Alaska in one week. In each case the senator voted to table the files in September, did not object in November, and now calls the September vote a lie. The paper will be exact about Mary Peltola's ad too, since FactCheck.org was: her claim that he "cast the deciding vote" is misleading, because in a 51-49 vote everyone did, and her "nearly $10,000 from two known Epstein associates" is two donors who appear in the Epstein records, were never accused of anything, and gave after the files were released. Her ad stretches. His denial breaks. The paper can tell the difference and thinks Alaska can.

The next thing is the hospital money, because the Senator said a number on television and the paper looked it up. He voted for the big bill on July 1, 2025. The Alaska-only Medicaid provision that had been written in to win Senator Murkowski's vote was struck by the parliamentarian, and the Senator was candid about how hard he had fought for it: "I need this provision," he told the administration, and losing it was "a giant, enormous frustration." What Alaska got instead was a share of a national $50 billion rural health fund. At the debate the Senator said the bill "did not cut Medicaid funding for Alaskans at all," and: "We have the biggest award under that bill that I wrote: $1.4 billion to transform Alaska's healthcare system." The award is $272 million, for the first year. It is the largest per capita in the country, and that is to his credit. The $1.4 billion is what Alaska would get if the federal government made the same award every year for five years, which it has not promised and which it resets annually. As for the Medicaid cut that did not happen at all, the state's own projection is that more than 9,000 Alaskans lose Medicaid under the work requirements and an independent estimate puts the number of Alaskans losing insurance at 35,000. The Senator also voted, to his credit again, with three other Republicans for a three-year extension of the ACA subsidies in December, after voting against several shutdown-ending pairings that included it, and the subsidies expired anyway, and an Alaskan on a marketplace plan went from $15 a month to $129. The paper gives him both halves. It would just like the first half said in the same voice as the second.

The tariffs are where the Senator and his senior colleague part ways, and where the paper thinks Alaska should look hardest. On April 2, 2025, the Senate voted 51 to 48 to end the Canada tariff emergency. Senator Murkowski voted yes: "In Alaska, this relationship matters. We share more than 1,538 miles of border with Canada." Senator Sullivan voted no, on the grounds that fentanyl comes from Canada and that "the senator doesn't believe the President's goal is to have these particular tariffs in place forever." He then voted no again in April on the global tariffs, and no three more times in October on Brazil, Canada and the world. Asked last month whether the tariffs have helped Alaskans, he declined to answer and talked about Democrats and oil. His brother Frank, who runs RPM International, an Ohio manufacturer, calls it "this tariff craziness." The paper also notes the rescission vote of July 2025, in which the Senator voted to claw back $1.1 billion in public broadcasting money, more than $20 million of it for Alaska's 27 public stations, one of which, KUCB in Unalaska, had just broadcast a tsunami warning after a magnitude 7.3 earthquake; Senator Murkowski voted no and asked, "So what happens to KUCB going forward?" The Senator's office said it had warned public media about "biased reporting" for years. The paper has listened to KUCB. The bias is toward the tsunami.

And the Russian diesel, which is the test the paper has run in Iowa, Kansas and Nevada this week and will run here. On October 9 the President announced a deal with Mr. Putin to put Russian diesel back on the world market. On October 13, the day the President landed in Wasilla, twelve senators wrote asking him to rescind it, "a gift to our adversary and a betrayal of our Allies"; six were Republicans, and one of the six was Lisa Murkowski. Dan Sullivan was not. At the debate two nights later he said, "I just led the effort on a Russia sanctions act that passed the Congress, so I'm opposed to that." He is one of the cosponsors of that act, which is led by Darline Graham and Richard Blumenthal. On October 16 the President waived the act's new sanctions and called it "a very good decision," and the Senator said on Fox that he did not agree, and then talked about how much the President has done for Alaska oil. Since then: no letter, no bill, no vote. His own diesel proposal, from September 22, was a moratorium on American diesel exports, which is to say the one diesel the Senator has asked to keep off the world market is ours. So the paper looked for one time in twelve years that Washington changed course because Dan Sullivan asked, and found three asks. The Alaska Medicaid provision he said he needed was struck, and he voted for the bill. The Canada tariffs he voted to keep because he did not believe they were forever are in their nineteenth month. The Russian diesel he opposes is on its way. Three asks, three noes, and every vote with the President anyway, which is a record, and it is the one the Senator is running on.

And the nominations, which are the Senator's record on who runs the country. Hegseth, yes, 50-50 with the Vice President; Murkowski no. Patel at the FBI, yes, "more than qualified"; Murkowski no. Blanche as Attorney General in August, 50 to 49, yes; Murkowski no, on the grounds that the country needed an Attorney General "who will check the worst impulses of this administration." The Senator had, in June, voted for a failed amendment to ban the $1.8 billion fund that the President's settlement with the IRS created to pay his allies, and then voted to confirm the man who negotiated the settlement, after that man said the fund was rescinded. The paper notes the pattern and does not need to belabor it: when the question is whether the President may do a thing, the Senator votes for the amendment that says no, and then for the person who says yes.

Two things about the Senator's own conduct, both of which he has explained, and the paper will take the explanations. In November 2025 the shutdown-ending bill carried a provision, inserted by Senator Thune, letting eight Republican senators whose phone records had been obtained by Jack Smith sue for $500,000 each; the Senator was one of the eight, voted for the bill, said he learned of the provision reading it just before the vote, and said he would never sue and backed the repeal, which became law in January. The paper believes him. And on the weekend of October 17 he went on Fox with Senator Cruz, who said that "if you're a left-wing transgender witch, you hate Donald Trump," and the Senator said, "Absolutely." And: "And they're trying to hide it." The paper does not believe the witches are hiding. It believes the Senator was asked a question on television by a colleague and gave the answer the colleague wanted, which is the most consistent thing in his record.

The debate was the one time Alaska saw the two of them in a room, and the paper watched it, and the headline in every paper in the state was some version of "mudslinging." The moderator at one point said, "If I have to shut mics off, I will." The Senator's opening move was to suggest his opponent had been given the questions: "Can I ask the moderator a question? We weren't supposed to get these questions beforehand, were we?" The moderator: "Neither one of you got questions beforehand. Absolutely not." Ms. Peltola: "I'm prepared." He said she "wanted more transgender surgeries for our troops," which is the stage version of an ad that FactCheck.org rated misleading in July, because she voted no on a House defense bill loaded with riders and then yes on the final one with the pay raise, the same final bill he voted for. He said "25 staffers quit on Mary Peltola because she abused them physically and emotionally," a number nobody has sourced. He said Iran "has killed thousands of American troops," a number the Pentagon has never used. The paper has covered a lot of debates this month. This is the only one where the incumbent's strategy was to accuse the other side of cheating, in the first minute, on the one night the whole state was watching.

Now Mary Peltola, who has things to answer for, and the paper will set them out. On September 23 the New York Times published a story based on nine former staffers alleging profane outbursts, a homophobic slur that the campaign denies, an ableist slur in a text message that the campaign admits and "regrets," a shove in the chest in February 2024 that the campaign calls an accidental bump on the day she was marking her late husband's first birthday without him, and a 2024 text wishing a Planned Parenthood board member would die of a botched abortion. Her answer at the debate: "I do not think that this election is about me on my worst day," and that many of the allegations were "outright fabrications or mass exaggerations." Her 2022 finance director called her "one of the finest human beings that I've ever worked for." The paper does not know what happened in those rooms. It knows that her husband, Buzzy, died in September 2023 flying moose meat out of a hunting camp near St. Mary's, that her mother died the same year, and that the text the campaign admits to was sent in 2026, which is after grief stops being an excuse. It also knows that after leaving Congress she spent several months at a law firm with a lobbying arm, never registered as a lobbyist, and was paid in the low six figures, which the Senator rounds up to "almost half a million," and that a Republican complaint about her House account's travel spending is sitting at an FEC without a quorum. None of this is nothing. The paper would also note that none of it is a vote, and that a Senate seat is six years of votes.

The paper will also say a word about the decoy, because it reflects on her side. There are two Dan Sullivans on the Alaska ballot: the Senator, and a retired Petersburg schoolteacher of the same name who filed as a Republican three days before the deadline, whom the Division of Elections found had filed "with a purpose to confuse or mislead," and whom the courts put back on. A super PAC funded largely by the progressive Sixteen Thirty Fund and a dark-money group spent more than a million dollars promoting him, and about three million on minor candidates in all; a third of likely primary voters could not tell the two Sullivans apart. Ms. Peltola, the state party and the Senate Democrats deny any role, and the paper has no evidence they had one. It has evidence that someone on their side thought Alaska should be won by confusing it, and the paper would like it known that it finds that contemptible, and that it does not change a single vote the Senator cast.

What the Senator's side did about the decoy is the other thing the paper has to report this morning, because it happened Thursday night. On October 22 the Justice Department sued the State of Alaska in federal court in Anchorage, under a voter-registration law, asking a judge to bar the state from certifying the Senate result if the Senator loses by fewer votes than the other Sullivan receives, on the theory that "some supporters of Senator Sullivan likely will inadvertently vote for Daniel J. Sullivan." The complaint is signed by the Associate Attorney General. On Friday the President told reporters where it came from: "I'm the one that said do it." On Sunday the Attorney General, Mr. Blanche, told CBS the department was "doing our own research under the law," was "not saying, 'don't certify,'" and had "no idea" whom the President meant. Senator Murkowski, who has endorsed the Senator, wrote on Friday that "Alaskans don't need any help voting for their preferred candidates" and that "the Department of Justice should have never filed this lawsuit." Senator Tillis said he minded the look of a lawsuit filed before anyone knows whether the facts that would support one have happened. The Senator's spokesman, by text: "We'll let the DOJ complaint run its course," and "Alaskans can tell the difference between a Democrat sideshow and Senator Sullivan's strong record of delivering for Alaska." He did not say whether the Senator wanted the suit, and the Senator has not said. Ms. Peltola: "This is the corruption AK is fed up with." On Monday Judge Sharon Gleason put the case on a fast track, noting that it arrived after "Alaskans had already begun casting their ballots," with the department's answers due Tuesday and Thursday and a ruling on the motion to dismiss possible before Election Day. The paper called the decoy contemptible two paragraphs ago and does not take it back. This is worse. A sitting senator's party has gone to court, before a single ballot is counted, to keep his seat from passing to the winner, and the senator's whole answer is to let it run its course. His senior colleague found the sentence in an afternoon. He has had five days.

Here is what she is for, since the Senator's campaign says she "didn't pass a single bill" in her term and a half. Her launch video: "Growing up, Alaska was a place of abundance. Now, we have scarcity." Her slogan is fish, family, freedom, and she means the fish: she wants a ban on bottom trawling and the pollock industry hates her for it, and on Friday at the Alaska Federation of Natives she said, "I will always fight to restore our fisheries. I feel like working on fish issues is my life's work." On Sunday, on the way to the Federation's banquet, another driver hit the car she and her family were in; the injuries were minor, the police found no sign anyone meant it, and her events are being rescheduled. She introduced legislation to open ANWR and the petroleum reserve, lobbied her own party for Willow, supports the Ambler Road, and opposes Pebble. She was the only Democrat the NRA endorsed in 2024. She rejected Kamala Harris's endorsement. She would have voted for the war-powers resolutions, because "our system was designed for a balance of powers," and she wants the Medicaid damage reversed first. She was the first Alaska Native in Congress and would be the first in the Senate. The Senator's ad says she is a creature of the Lower 48; she was born in Anchorage to a Yup'ik mother from Kwethluk, and the Senator was born in Fairview Park, Ohio.

The Daily Buffoon endorses Mary Peltola for the United States Senate from Alaska. Every public poll in October but one has her ahead on first choices and winning the ranked-choice count, by one to five points, and the RealClearPolitics average has her up by less than one; Sabato moved the race to Leans Democratic on October 6 and wrote, "Alaska voters have also seemed to look past the stormy tempers of some other members," which is the kindest sentence anyone has written about Ted Stevens in years. Ms. Peltola has raised $32.6 million to the Senator's $13.8 million and outraised him in the last quarter by six to one. Through Monday afternoon the state had 46,403 ballots back, 30,536 of them cast in person, with another 30,000 mail ballots still out; the in-person early vote is running half again ahead of 2022 at this point. The paper endorses her with the Times story on the record, because the choice in Alaska is between a woman who may have been cruel to her staff in the worst year of her life and a man who has been dutiful to the President in every year of his, and because a senator who calls the war temporary and votes fourteen times to continue it, who voted to table the files and calls the vote a lie, who says $272 million is $1.4 billion and nine thousand is zero, is not a man whose word Alaska can take to the bank, or to the pump, where it is $4.83. The paper goes on the record, dated October 27: the Senator will not ask the Justice Department to withdraw its suit before November 3; the Russian diesel sanctions will stay waived through November 3 with no letter from him; and the war-powers count will finish at fourteen.

Four clowns. The Senator is a Marine and a serious man and the paper does not think he is funny, which is why it is four and not five. The fifth is for men who use other people's children. The Senator only uses other people's numbers. He told Wasilla the true forever war was the Democrats' war on Alaska oil, with Alaska crude at $123 a barrel, the highest since 2022, the treasury flush, the dividend checks going out that month, and a temporary war in the Persian Gulf, which he keeps voting to extend, doing all of it, and when the President's lawyers sued to keep his seat for him, he let it run its course. Alaska has until November 3. The paper would like it to rank accordingly.