Alaska, Florida and Wyoming Vote Tuesday in Primaries That Will Shape the Midterms

Voters in Alaska, Florida and Wyoming cast primary ballots Tuesday, August 18, in contests that will set the stage for a midterm election cycle Republicans and Democrats both admit is close.

The stakes are simple. Republicans hold a narrow House majority. Control of the Senate is up for grabs. Whoever wins in November decides whether President Donald Trump gets two more years of a functioning Congress or two years of gridlock and oversight hearings, according to a recent analysis from TD Cowen cited by CNBC, which noted Trump's slipping approval ratings have boosted Democratic prospects.

Alaska's Senate Race Has an Odd Wrinkle

Incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan faces a real threat in November from former Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola, who won two statewide races in deep-red Alaska back in 2022 before losing her House seat in 2024. The Cook Political Report rates the seat a toss-up, and Associated Press reporters Mark Thiessen and Becky Bohrer flagged a genuinely strange detail: Alaska's primary also includes a second candidate who happens to be named Dan Sullivan. Alaska doesn't hold party-line primaries. The top four vote-getters, regardless of party, advance to a ranked-choice general election in November.

Peltola is running as a centrist, not a progressive. She's pushing targeted tax credits for Alaska's oil and gas refineries and permitting reform to speed up energy projects, according to CNBC. She's also proposed eliminating federal income tax for Alaskans earning under $92,000 a year, paid for by higher taxes on millionaires and billionaires, a policy that borrows from the left even as she runs to the center on energy.

Peltola has worked to put distance between herself and the national Democratic Party. The New York Times reported she moved to disavow an endorsement from former Vice President Kamala Harris, whose Fight for the People PAC sent a fundraising email touting Peltola last week. Peltola's campaign called the email unsolicited, telling reporters, "Mary isn't seeking endorsements from anyone from the Lower 48."

That distancing comes amid staff turmoil. The Daily Wire reported that Peltola's longtime campaign manager, Anton McParland, who had worked with her since 2022 and served as her chief of staff, is no longer with the campaign, in what Alaska Landmine described as a "Saturday Night Massacre" of senior staff. New York Times reporter Kellen Browning confirmed McParland's departure on social media. It's unclear from available reporting whether the shakeup is tied to the campaign's effort to separate from Harris or something else entirely. No campaign has offered a public explanation connecting the two.

Florida's Democratic Civil War Goes Local

Florida is ground zero for the Democratic Party's fight over its own identity. In the state's 25th Congressional District, a Broward County swing seat that Cook Political Report and other analysts say could help decide House control, Democratic Socialists of America-endorsed candidate Oliver Larkin is challenging two-term incumbent Rep. Jared Moskowitz, according to Fox News.

Larkin, a veteran of Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign, has called for abolishing the U.S. Senate, describing it in a Fox News interview as an "undemocratic institution," and has referred to Israel's ruling coalition as a "religious supremacist regime." Moskowitz is a vocal Israel supporter backed by AIPAC and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

This mirrors fights playing out nationally. CNBC noted that progressive candidates have won recent primaries in Michigan (Abdul El-Sayed) and Minnesota (Peggy Flanagan) on platforms of Medicare for All and higher taxes on the wealthy, while Wisconsin Democratic socialist Francesca Hong lost her gubernatorial primary to centrist David Crowley. Whether Larkin can pull off a similar upset against an establishment-backed, pro-Israel incumbent in a genuine swing district will tell Democrats something about where general-election voters, not just primary voters, actually stand.