WASILLA, Ala. — Doug Glenn walked out of Fred Meyer on Monday carrying a $53 pair of Levi’s — not exactly cheap, he said, as he glanced at the receipt, but about what he expected.
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Glenn owns an aviation company in nearby Palmer and remains a loyal supporter of Donald Trump. Fuel costs have been an issue. But here, he said, “everything is expensive.”
Everything had been since “the great scam” of covid, he added — and besides, he had a hunch that Trump’s war with Iran would be ending soon. His only complaint about Trump’s presidency was that Trump hadn’t finished off Iran with the first strikes.
On Tuesday, Glenn, 61, planned to put on a Trump shirt and drive up the road for his first Trump rally, celebrating the president even as Trump’s approval ratings have cratered around the country. Glenn questioned whether those polls could be trusted, anyway. He planned to bring his whole family.
He is among the reliably Republican voters in this conservative Alaska bastion whom the GOP needs to turn out in the coming weeks. Trump’s 3,400-mile trip to this ruby-red pocket of a GOP-leaning state — Wasilla, the home of former governor and vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin — shows how urgently his party needs to mobilize its base to keep control of the Senate.
With Republicans all but writing off their chances of winning Senate races in states such as North Carolina and Georgia, Alaska has become a crucial battleground this fall. Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan is facing a challenge from former Democratic congresswoman Mary Peltola, and the two are neck-and-neck.
Trump’s political team has effectively given up on trying to win back the swing voters that helped propel him to the White House in 2024, focusing instead on ginning up turnout in Republican strongholds to offset higher Democratic enthusiasm.
Glenn said he has paid no attention to Trump’s construction projects in Washington — his ballroom, arch and other beautification initiatives that have been among the president’s top priorities this year. But he had taken note of — and issue with — the nearly $1 billion cost of Barack Obama’s newly constructed presidential center. The building was privately funded at a level Trump’s presidential library foundation has said it also intends to raise.
“When meanwhile, down the road two miles, we got kids going without groceries, so you know, I got a problem with that, for sure,” Glenn said, blaming the former Democratic president for focusing on a legacy project as some Alaskans were without basic necessities.
Just across the parking lot from Glenn, Sara Mitchell stood holding a cardboard sign: “Will work for food shelter blanket gas $ etc. Plz help struggling college student.”
The 35-year-old said she has been living out of her car for the last three months. Once a fan of Trump’s political style, Mitchell said it became clear that he, like most elected officials, wouldn’t meaningfully improve the lives of people struggling, and has no plans to vote. “A lot of the promises that he made didn’t happen,” she said.
Trump’s rally Tuesday was expected to draw anti-Trump protesters from local Democratic groups.
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“I think it’s chicken shit,” Eric Croft, chair of the Alaska Democratic Party, said of Trump coming to stump for Sullivan, a retired colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve. Peltola is “120 pounds sopping wet, and this Marine has to call Dad for help because he can’t handle her.”
Croft needled Trump, for whom crowd size matters, about selecting a venue smaller than the 5,000-seat Alaska Airlines Center, which he visited in 2022 for his last rally here. Both candidates he stumped for at the time, Kelly Tshibaka for Senate and Palin for House, lost.
“They’re sending him to what they hope is the safest possible place, the reddest place they can find in this area,” Croft said.
James Muller, a retired political science professor at the University of Alaska at Anchorage, said the Senate race is difficult to predict in part because of “notoriously unreliable” polling in the state. But Republicans usually have an advantage here in federal races, he said, because the state’s economy typically suffers under Democratic presidencies, given Alaska’s dependence on resource extraction, which is favored by the GOP.
Alaska has always been an expensive place to live, particularly in remote villages inaccessible by roads, where supplies have to be delivered by planes.
“I think people are a bit worried about the economy, but they don’t tend to blame Trump for it in the way that people in other parts of the country might,” Muller said.
Michael Bowles, a conservative Republican state House candidate challenging a moderate incumbent Republican, said turnout among unaffiliated but conservative men in the state is a concern. Undeclared voters in Alaska far outnumber those registered to a party — though Republicans have a registration advantage over Democrats.
Voter turnout in the region was low in this month’s municipal elections, which are held before the state and federal Election Day. Just 4.5 percent of voters cast ballots in Palmer, and 11 percent in Wasilla, according to the cities.
“A lot of conservative Alaskans, quite frankly, just want to be left alone. It’s a mind frame up here,” Bowles said of the government skepticism that made some in his community less likely to vote.
Bowles and his wife signed up to attend Trump’s rally, but he wasn’t sure if they would go. He had doors to knock on in his own campaign.
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