The race for Alaska's Senate seat is one of the nation's most closely watched midterm battles and might be decided by a unique determinant: fish.

With Democrat Mary Peltola clinging to a narrow lead over two-term Republican Senator Dan Sullivan, she's anchoring part of her pitch around a promise of 'fish, family and freedom.' 

Peltola advocates banning large out-of-state trawlers and building stronger financial safety nets for local fishermen. Sullivan wants to block foreign seafood fleets from Alaska waters and US markets.

Their difference comes down to who is exactly allowed in Alaska's waters: Peltola wants to ban Lower 48 factory trawlers, Sullivan does not. Instead, he wants to prohibit unregulated foreigners

Sullivan recently sponsored a bill requiring trawlers to use nets that don't touch the seafloor and let accidentally-caught fish escape. Peltola also advocates for closer bycatch monitoring.

For Alaskan fishermen, the two have become an inside joke as both candidates focus on similar issues but deny the other is the right person to tackle them.

The Last Frontier's fisheries are a central element of its economy but face unprecedented challenges.

The state’s commercial fisheries account for almost 60 percent of the wild seafood harvested in the US and employ one in seven Alaskans, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 

But in Western Alaska, chinook and chum salmon runs have collapsed so badly that some villages are barred from catching even one king salmon per household. 

Pollock trawlers in the Bering Sea have caught roughly 20,000 king salmon a year as bycatch over the past decade.

Who is to blame has become the defining question of the race, and Peltola has pointed squarely at her opponent’s donors.

Sullivan has collected roughly $300,000 from trawling executives and political action committees over his career. Peltola has taken about $10,000 from the industry.

Sullivan insists his record speaks louder. ‘The difference is, I’ve actually done things to help protect them,’ he said at the Kodiak debate, which was devoted entirely to fishing.

His Bycatch Reduction Act, introduced in June, would force pollock trawlers to keep their nets off the seafloor and fit them with devices that let salmon escape. It cleared a Senate committee last month but must still pass the full Senate and the House. The pollock industry has objected to the seafloor rules.

The Peltola campaign has dismissed the bill as election-year theatre. Peltola’s own bycatch bills, introduced in the House in 2024, drew fierce trawl industry opposition and never passed.

A Yup’ik Alaska Native who grew up fishing salmon with her father, Peltola won Alaska’s lone House seat in 2022. That ended nearly 50 years of Republican control and made her the first Alaska Native elected to Congress. She lost the seat in 2024.

Fish is one of five priorities on her campaign website. Beyond the trawler ban, she wants funding for fish stock assessments and disaster aid for fishermen, tighter national bycatch standards, expanded electronic monitoring, and Tribal seats on the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, which oversees fishing in federal waters. 

Her website even features a game in which users steer salmon past nets and predators.

Sullivan, who is backed by President Donald Trump, has also pushed bills to strengthen coastal enforcement and ban Russian seafood imports.

Both candidates agree the federal government failed fishermen when runs collapsed in the past.

A 2025 survey by the Democratic-aligned Data for Progress found that 74 percent of Alaskans support a federal ban on trawling. But owners of smaller trawl boats fear a crackdown could sink them too.

‘The impact of trawling is getting blown way out of proportion and being used as political ammunition,’ Jason Chandler, a second-generation trawler from Kodiak, told The New York Times. ‘It stings a bit to have your livelihood treated that way.’

Chandler fishes pollock and rockfish in the Gulf of Alaska from a 77-foot boat, a fraction of the size of the factory ships that process and freeze their catch on board.

Peltola’s press secretary, Caroline Etgen, told the Daily Mail that Peltola does not support a blanket ban on small and mid-sized Alaskan trawl boats. ‘It’s against the out-of-state corporate greed that leads to wanton waste and damage to our seafloor,’ she said.

Lauren Wolford, 38, a third-generation commercial fisherman and member of a Fish and Game advisory committee, told the Daily Mail that the challenge for both candidates is ‘to convince people that they genuinely care about fishing’ rather than ‘just using it as a political pillar to stand on.’

She believes Peltola ‘has a deeper understanding of the actual fisheries,’ and said Sullivan ‘has historically been more interested in energy development rather than ocean protection.’

Fishermen who ‘don’t talk about politics,’ she said, will be won over by candidates who show they will work with the local committees that shape their livelihoods.

The Daily Mail has contacted Sullivan’s campaign for comment.