1. Alaska has emerged as one of the country's most closely watched political battlegrounds. Former Alaska Senate Minority Leader and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Begich joins Kay Brown to explain why the state could become one of the decisive fronts in the 2026 midterm elections—and what that could mean for the future of American democracy. The conversation examines Senate control, ranked-choice voting, campaign strategy, voter turnout, Native Alaskan communities, election administration, and why Alaska's unique political landscape may have national consequences.

In this episode:

• Why Alaska could be key to flipping the U.S. Senate

• The growing political opportunity Democrats see in the state

• Mary Peltola's Senate campaign and the road to victory

• How ranked-choice voting is reshaping Alaska elections

• The governor's race and Tom Begich's campaign

• The impact of national politics on Alaska voters

• High energy costs, healthcare cuts, and rural communities

• Concerns about election administration and protecting voting rights

• Why Alaska's elections could influence the balance of power in Washington

Guest

Tom Begich is a former Alaska State Senator, former Senate Minority Leader, and Democratic candidate for Governor of Alaska. Drawing on decades of public service, he discusses the political forces reshaping Alaska and why the state may play an outsized role in determining control of the U.S. Senate.

About Democracy on Fire

Hosted by Kay Brown, Democracy on Fire explores the people, policies, and movements shaping American democracy through thoughtful conversations with elected officials, candidates, organizers, journalists, and policy experts.

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Only governors can assert the authority of their states when it comes to actually preserving the right of their citizens to have their own voice, to have their own vote, and to ensure that even after election day, if those ballots are postmarked, that those ballots are still counted because those are legitimate votes.

And that has been the way this country has operated for centuries.

Not for decades, not for years, but for centuries.

We counted the ballots that were, that were marked on time.

I think they're going to push the envelope and I'll be pushing back just as hard to ensure that every vote cast in Alaska in a timely manner is counted.

Hello and welcome to Democracy on Fire.

I'm Kay Brown and today we're going to talk about the prospects for, for getting Democratic control of the United States Senate in the upcoming midterm elections.

And this is crucial for so many reasons.

The main one being the opportunity to start reining in the out of control Trump regime.

And my guest is Tom Begich, who's a candidate for governor of Alaska.

And we've been friends for a long time.

And so I'm really thrilled to be able to have this opportunity to chat about what's going on in Alaska, one of just a handful of states where there is an opportunity, a viable opportunity for a pickup in the U.S. senate.

And I know all eyes are on our state as well as others, and I say our state.

I lived in Alaska for many years and have recently relocated to California, but I'm still following events very closely of what's going on.

Anyway, welcome, Tom, and tell me a little bit about why Alaska has become so important in the national conversation.

Well, thank you for having me, Kay, and thanks for the conversation.

And you know, Alaska's always been important.

Now it's even more important, though, because with our, you know, there was belief back about a year ago that there was no way that the Senate could ever flip.

And the Senate is one of the three, you know, bastions to hold this president accountable.

You know, governors have done their part.

The House is completely bereft of leadership on the Republican side, so there's no accountability there.

But in the Senate, where you have both the filibuster and the ability potentially now to cross that 50 vote threshold, the 51 vote threshold, there's the ability to truly hold back some of these egregious appointments.

And that kind of thing.

And the reason why is because quite frankly, the President's leadership has even disaffected our sort of pinkish state on his job performance.

So right now the president most polling is at least 10 points underwater up here in Alaska.

So Alaska has become part of the pathway with our strong U.S. senate candidate, Mary Peltola, a pathway to potentially winning back the Senate or at least holding it to an achievable draw, which I think is critically important not just for Alaska, not just for the Senate, but for the country as a whole.

So we need four more senators to get to.

Yes.

And we have to hold our own.

So, you know, we're looking at Maine, we're looking at North Carolina, we're looking at holding on to Michigan and Georgia because those are critical states that we currently hold.

Michigan being the one probably most volatile right now.

We're looking at opportunities not just in Alaska, but also in Iowa.

You know, the states that we, we believe we can play because of the, really the, the nature of the governor.

Not the governor, sorry, the nature of the President in truly not leading the country.

But, but in fact, God, God knows what he's leading, but he's all over the map when it comes to his leadership.

And it's really disaffected, not only his base, but also those nonpartisans in the middle that generally don't follow things that closely, but are deeply disturbed by this leadership.

So we're seeing that blue wave emerge in all of the polling, in all of the by elections that have happened both at the local level and at state, statewide level in these states.

So one of the interesting things about this race, and it's been in the news recently about having two Dan Sullivan's on the ballot and Dan Sullivan being the incumbent, you U.S. senator.

And then there's another retired teacher, Dan Sullivan, who decided to get in and the state of Alaska tried to remove him from the ballot and there was a court case and the court said he had to be included.

So I assume that he is still going to be on the ballot with the court direction.

Do you think that having two people with the same name is going to make any substantial difference in the outcome?

I mean, is the confusion factor something you.

Well, let's talk about the confusion factor because in your own situation, you have another baggage on the ballot running for a different office.

But he's your nephew, right?

Yeah, he's my nephew.

We don't, we don't share the same political values.

Yeah, Nick, we don't share the same political values.

And you know, I, I mean, is there confusion with the two Dan Sullivans?

You know, the press has been so adamant about the race that the confusion level is going to be quite minimal.

It's ironic though, in a way because Dan Sullivan of Petersburg has actually lived in the state longer than Dan Sullivan, who I like to say of Ohio, you know, because our U.S. senator, you know, moved up here a couple decades ago.

But Dan Sullivan, the teacher is and from Petersburg, who's actually been here most of his adult life.

So.

But no, not a lot of confusion.

And so there's 16, 16 candidates on the ballot running for the U.S. senate.

And then we have what's known as either a blanket primary or a jungle primary where everybody's on the same ballot and the top four advance and you only get to vote for one.

And then in the general election we have ranked choice voting should nobody get a majority on the initial ballot.

So our primary is kind of late at August 18th in the situation and it makes it kind of true, harder for things to coalesce.

But in this case it does seem like Mary is the leading person, even though there's a couple of others Democrats also have their names on the ballot.

Yes, yeah, yeah, there's, there's no question, you know, her second quarter fundraising here was another, you know, seven plus million dollars that just was reported this morning.

That's a combined total of at least 15 million that she's raised.

And in Alaska, as you know, K, 15 million goes a heck of a long way.

And my guess is that that number will double before this campaign is over.

That doesn't even count independent expenditures, you know, and so those are obviously going to be playing a role, already are playing a role up here, both on the side of Dan Sullivan, the incumbent and Mary.

But it really is a two person race.

That's how people perceive it.

And even in the ranked choice, where there's only four that you're going to be choosing, you know, fundamentally choosing from.

If Dan Sullivan II gets into the ranked choice, I would suspect people would just rank them 1, 2, not knowing the difference if they're actual incumbent supporters.

So in a way it mitigates any, any impact that that might have otherwise had.

And that just assumes that Dan Sullivan the second, the Petersburg Dan Sullivan actually makes it into the runoff because he has to be one of the top four to do that.

I believe that he will be.

But, but that's, that's still up in the air.

August 18th is the primary.

We have to wait until that day to know for sure.

So another opportunity in addition to the Senate.

Well, before we leave the Senate, I want to say the polling I've seen shows a very tight race or mar slightly hid in some of the polls, but within the margin of error still.

And so it, it looks possible and turnout is really going to be key.

Are you optimistic about the, the turnout, the way things are looking?

I am in the general, I'm optimistic about the turnout.

You know, our, our primary happens in the midst of sort of Mary's core constituencies, hunting and fishing season.

And so that has an impact on turnout in rural Alaska in particular when you have a late August primary.

And we've always seen that that pattern has been repeated decade after decade.

And you know, that's just the nature of when we have our primary.

But I do believe you're going to see exceedingly high turnout in the, for midterm in the fall, partially because of the governor's race, partially because we do have hotly contested U.S. senate, U.S. house, R.A. and, and yeah, it's in the margin right now, that's for sure.

We have not, we have not been able to account for, for the national mood because that can have a tremendous impact even here in Alaska.

And he barely lost that election at that time.

And so those waves can make a difference of two points, maybe three points on the outside.

So I want to continually watch what's happening in Iran.

The cost of gasoline and we're the second highest gas prices in the nation are right here in Alaska, despite us being a oil producing state, a petroleum state.

And so I'm really curious to see where attitudes are at based on that national and international situation because that will affect, if you will, the psychology of the voter up here in Alaska.

And it could account for up to two points, two or three points.

So there's been publicity about the fallout from the big beautiful bill, so called that passed last year, that the safety net programs that are having their eligibility changed and people falling off the health insurance and just other impacts, the cutback on research and on contracts that were supposed to be coming to our state that have fallen by the wayside.

All of those things I think are likely to be influencing how people are viewing the current political situation and encouraging, you know, we need different leadership because this is not working for us.

Exactly.

Are you picking that up from voters that people are feeling those impacts?

Absolutely are there.

And I would add, you know, the assault on Alaska Native.

You know, we have efforts to try to, to rectify the ill treatment of Alaska Natives here in Alaska.

And those were deeply affected by those bills.

And it has galvanized the Alaska Native vote.

Now that's 20% of our population on a good day, you know, in terms of voting population.

And so you, you know, that cannot be underestimated because it's very difficult to poll that population because of its rural, you know, so so much of greatest percentage of it are in areas that just simply belie polling.

So, so I'm not only hearing exactly what you've talked about, but people are directly connecting it to one party and they're directly connecting it to the votes that were taken in the US House where my nephew was the deciding vote, single vote.

Those passed both those bills and he was a deciding vote in both of those instances, could have voted with his constituency but chose to vote with the administration.

And people know that.

And so I think those are having an impact on the U.S. senate race.

They're having an impact on the U.S. house race and quite frankly, they're actually having an impact on the governor's race as well.

Let's talk about the U.S. house race.

The candidates you mentioned, your nephew Nick Bagich, is on the ballot and he has generally been very supportive of the president and his policies and voting with him.

And I would assume that's going to be a drag on his popularity, although we don't see much polling really about that race and there's several.

There's a couple of Democrats running and it's not entirely clear who's going to prevail.

But you know, I have my favorite and I expect you to.

How do you see that race shifting up?

I want to be clear.

There's one Democrat, major Democrat and one major nonpartisan running.

They're not two Democrats.

One is a nonpartisan, one is a Democrat.

You know, first in terms of I did do you know, we do internal polling.

I work with Salinda Lake Lake research.

And we of course wanted to pull the level of knowledge between those who see my name and those who see my nephew's name.

And quite frankly, while I'm above water in our polling, he is below water in our polling.

And you know, all that that means he has a net negative, I have a net positive.

So there's differentiation that's occurring.

That net negative is worth noting because that really is a decisive rejection of the actions he's taken.

So that's sort of on the good news side of the equation.

On the bad news side of the equation, you do have two really strong candidates running against him.

And, and there's no differentation.

So in the end, they're going to go to the runoff.

The ranked choice runoff, or one of those is Reverend Matt Schultz, who's a Democrat in the Talarico mode, who is somebody that I support and that I have been encouraging to stay in this race and to work hard in this race.

He is the leading Democrat in the race.

There's also a nonpartisan Bill Hill, who I've worked with in the past.

He's a former commercial fisherman, former superintendent out in rural Alaska, Athabasca native, and he's somebody I've worked with on education reform and education issues when I was in the Senate and even before when I was at the Coalition for Education Equity.

And so, you know, both good candidates, you know, Bill Hill and Matt Schultz, both good candidates, but my fear is that they really, because they have to compete in this primary, they're competing for resources, that it ends up, in a way diminishing the opportunity to succeed against, against Nick.

And so Nick leads in most of the polling right now, but under 50%, I'll be very clear about that.

He has not crossed that 50% threshold.

And these two candidates are, are the other two candidates are sort of neck and neck.

And so, you know, what it comes down to is who's going to be able to will they diffuse the money or will they be able to gather enough resources to be able to run a highly financed campaign?

Nick doesn't have that worry.

He's going to be getting substantial support from the Republican Congressional Committee and ies.

So in a way, I think we're missing an opportunity here, but there's very little opportunity to take one or the other out of the race because they're both good people and they're both working their best.

So that's the dilemma we face.

The opportunity is there.

We have a congressman underwater.

He's only a freshman.

He has damaged his name and reputation, but he has been given the gift of a split, split opposition.

So that's the, that's the, that's what we're wrestling with in the U.S. house race.

And our structural system that we have now doesn't let us pick a progressive to rally behind so that we can move into the way the, you know, we used to have a true primary system, and now it's just kind of meaningless, really.

I mean, you do winnow the field, but in terms of the Democrats being able to clearly or the progressive side of the House clearly rally around one candidate.

Well, let's hope that that sorts itself out in a positive way.

And let's talk about your race, the governor's race.

It's very crowded.

Got a lot of, a lot of 16, huh?

16 Total.

Yeah.

And that's, that's quite a few.

How are you feeling?

I understand you're leading in all the polls, person in that field.

Well, you know, how does it, how does it look and how does it feel?

First, on the Walker situation, it's actually his fifth run for governor.

This is his fifth run.

He won one time.

He had run before that time.

And so, so he's actually tried this a few times.

And, and, but how does it look?

For me, I, I have been steadily leading the race since the, you know, field began to form out.

So polling that's neutral polling, not our own polling, but that's been reinforced by not only our own polling, but Dipman Research, another polling firm shows us, always shows my campaign always sitting around anywhere from most recently 19.7% to, in the Dittmann poll, I was running at around 21%.

I mean each of these pollsters uses different methodology.

But in the Alaska survey research polling, which is the one that's been most consistent, done generally every five weeks or six weeks, that that number has been undiminished.

Even though we haven't done advertising, we've just been going out reaching as many people in the community as we can.

We're well over 20,000 actual content, physical contacts.

In Alaska, that may not sound big to your national audience, but in Alaska that the winning number, the number first place person here is going to have 26,000 votes.

That's what they're going to have.

That's, that's who's going to be in first place coming out of the primary.

And I, I certainly will be, you know, if not at that number above that number as it stands.

And, and so you know, from my perspective, we are advertising starts this coming week and we're going to probably be dropping about a quarter of a million.

Again, that may sound small to your national audience, but as you know, Kay, in a four week time period, a quarter of a million dollars will be probably the largest buy for the governor's race on the air up through the primary.

And that's the kind of thing that you have to do to make sure your name gets out there, that it catches the attention of the electorate because the U.S. senate race is dominating right now.

And so that's the goal right now is to ensure that we reach those numbers.

So.

Do you have any concerns about the way that the election would.

Could be administered in Alaska?

The.

You know, it's kind of unusual that the person in charge of the elections, the current lieutenant governor, is also a candidate for governor.

And we see so many attempts at the federal level to reach in and to try to manipulate the state's administration of the voting.

Oh, sorry.

I'm just wondering if that is a concern or if we think it's everything's going to be just going smoothly and according to plan.

Well, nothing's going to be going according to plan.

I think that the lieutenant governor's office and in particular the division of elections, have shown that, you know, that situation you mentioned earlier about the two Sullivans, regardless of whether you think it was a fancy ploy.

I mean, both sides have done those kinds of fancy ploys in the past.

What you had happen here for the first time was lieutenant governor, or in this case, the division of elections, claiming to know the state of mind of a candidate and determining based on that state of mind that they can't exercise their first amendment rights.

That, to me, was a radical departure from, you know, from how we should be governing ourselves in this democracy.

And I think it's a reflection of the president modeling the behavior that you can break the rules over and over again until you win.

And that's about power.

So, you know, when.

When our.

When the president also demanded our voter rolls and our lieutenant governor turned them over so that the president could potentially go through our voter rolls and determine who could or couldn't mail a ballot back, that is such an egregious violation, not only of the federal constitution, but also of our state's right to privacy and our state's constitution.

Your lieutenant governor should be fighting to ensure that doesn't happen.

And here's something funny.

Nobody else running in this race spoke up about that except me.

And I find that even more troubling because there's this fear factor.

If I speak out, you know, and against what is a clear and obvious wrong that is denying Alaskans potentially their right to vote, I might get punished by this federal administration.

We have to break that.

You know, only governors can stand up against that attitude.

Only governors can assert the authority of their states when it comes to actually preserving the right of their citizens to have their own voice, to have their own vote, and to ensure that even after election day, if those ballots are postmarked, that those ballots are still counted because those are legitimate votes.

And that has been the way this country has operated for centuries.

Not for decades, not for years, but for centuries.

We've counted the ballots that were marked on time.

And that to me, I think they're going to push the envelope and I'll be pushing back just as hard to ensure that every vote cast in Alaska in a timely manner is counted.

And that means also ensuring every community gets a chance to vote.

Because as you know, this very administration, over two years ago, there were three precincts that didn't even have a voting place.

And so those people didn't get the right to vote.

That's not going to happen with the way that our campaign and the Peltola campaign, and whether it's the Schultz of the Hill campaign, the way that we activate our folks is going to be to ensure that there are voting and polling places and that voting occurs in every one of our communities.

Well, we've come to the end of our time and I want to really thank you, Tom, for sharing your insights about what's going on.

And thank you for running and being such a strong voice for rationality and civility and the rule of law.

The rule of law.

Who thought that we would be having to stand up and cheer for the rule of law?

But we certainly things are very concerning, as you know, about the whole situation.

But there is hope and the path does go through Alaska.

And I think we're going to have a successful blue wave that's going to overcome any potential objections or challenges that might come up to the votes.

And we just need to get everyone to take part and to show up and participate.

It's going to be more crucial than ever.

I completely agree with you, Kay, and thank you for the opportunity to talk about that.

As we build a future made right here in Alaska, that's what we're going to do.

We're going to protect our citizens.

So how can people help?

Well, you know, volunteers help, obviously, contributions help, those kinds of things.

But most important thing is just learn more about the candidates.

My website's www.tombaggageforalaska.

The words are spelled out dot com.

Great.

Thank you so much and thanks for listening and watching and hope you'll be joining us again.

Democracy on Fire on United America Network or wherever you get your podcasts.