Amanda Coyne covers Alaska politics on her blog AmandaCoyne.com.

On an early fall evening in Wasilla, Alaska, just down the road from Sarah Palin’s house, a group of local politicos gathers for what they call the “Rally for the Valley.” Wasilla is part of the Matanuska Valley—the Mat-Su, we call it here, really less of a valley within a state than a state within a country. At 23,000 square miles, it’s about the size of West Virginia.

It’s a big, beet-red swath of country in a magenta state. There are about 70,000 registered voters in the Mat-Su, the largest concentration of conservative voters in a state with about 479,000 registered voters. Considering that races in Alaska are sometimes won by single-digit votes—and that Sen. Mark Begich won by about 4,000 votes against Sen. Ted Stevens in 2008—that’s a coveted block. Sarah Palin’s neighbors, in other words, might very well hold the fate of the U.S. Senate in their hands, a thought that could make more than a few Beltway denizens choke on their chardonnays.


Wasilla has long had a certain reputation in Alaska. Say “Valley trash” here and people know exactly what you mean. But since the 2008 Palin pick, that reputation has spread nationally, and Mat-Su people either don’t care, or embrace it. This is very much in evidence at the rally: There’s the scruffy guy who sees Muslim terrorists everywhere, the frazzled woman who dreams in prophesy, the mayoral candidate who recently got ratted out to Homeland Security for his weird talk of guns, anarchy and riots in movie theaters. The camo-clad hunters just in from a moose kill.

But then again, a few of the moose hunters are beautiful women. One of the attendees probably knows more about the Federalist Papers than anyone in the state. Lawyers. Engineers. A few teachers. The governor, who looks and often acts like a mild-mannered banker. All part of the mix. And Begich’s Republican challenger, Dan Sullivan, who’s also here, needs all of them if he is to unseat the incumbent and give the GOP a shot at its first Senate majority in seven years.

On paper—with a Harvard undergrad and a Georgetown law degree, a stunning Alaska Native wife (also with a Harvard degree) and three beautiful daughters—Sullivan seems the ideal candidate. A former active-duty Marine still in the reserves, he worked at the White House and as an assistant secretary of state under Condoleezza Rice. In Alaska, he was attorney general and commissioner for the Department of Natural Resources. All of which might have impressed a different crowd, but Alaskans in general, and Wasillans in particular, aren’t impressed with much that doesn’t involve new ways to skin a moose or keep warm at 40 below. (That he’s a marine, however, goes far.)

At the rally, when it’s Sullivan’s turn to speak, he stands on the picnic table and gives a variation of the same stump speech being given by all red-state Republican Senate challengers across the country. Obama bad. Freedom good. Obamacare bad. Immigration—secure the border first. The EPA—running amok. Guns—Dems want to take them away. It’s basically the same speech Sullivan has been giving since he announced last October. He’s better at it now, but still needs work. His inflections can be off, his pauses in the wrong places. At times he can look at the crowd, hands out, wordless, as if searching for something – that elusive respect, perhaps.

But this is his first political campaign, and compared with Begich, he’s a newcomer to the state. All told, as the Begich campaign is all too happy to point out, Sullivan has spent just 12 full-time years in Alaska. Begich was born and raised in Anchorage, and has been involved in politics since he was a teenager. Politics and this state are in his blood. Begich knows exactly where to pause.

Begich’s campaign and the major super PAC supporting him have seized on this in their ads against Sullivan, beginning with the primaries. He’s not one of us, the ads repeat. You can’t trust him, they say. He’s not a real Alaskan.

Millions have been spent to sharpen that line of attack, bruising Sullivan, but not taking him out. The counterattack—that Begich has voted with Obama 97 percent of the time, that Begich is Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s puppet, that not only did Begich vote for Obamacare, but got nothing for Alaska for it—has drawn more blood.

Recent polls show Sullivan inching past Begich in the horserace. Perhaps more concerning to Begich are his disapproval numbers, hovering between 48-51 percent, according to PPP and a recent poll conducted by a respected local pollster for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (which is backing Sullivan). That’s about where Ted Stevens was after he was indicted in 2008 and before Begich beat him.

Much of this is out of Begich’s hands. That chanber poll also showed that only 32 percent of Alaskans approve of Obama and 69 percent of the voters think the country is on the “wrong track.”

It doesn’t help that the Obama administration can’t seem to stop offending Alaskans. Last year, gun-toting EPA officials outraged people here when they stormed local small mining camps in the state’s vast interior, looking for violations of the Clean Water Act, which they never found. U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell recently told the state’s House majority leader that she wished Alaska would “just get over” asking for a potentially life-saving road that would cut through a slice of a federal refuge. In the spring, EPA chief Gina McCarthy told the Wall Street Journal that a gift of moose meat given to her by an Alaska Native girl could “gag a maggot.”

Then there’s the Affordable Care Act, which around these parts is about as popular as gun control. Just a few weeks ago, the largest insurance company in the state said that Obamacare insurance rates would increase next year by 37 percent.

But some of it is in Begich’s hands. He did vote for Obamacare and has voted with his party 87 percent of the time. He also lost the endorsement of the NRA because of his Supreme Court justice votes. But what many see as most damaging was his “Willie Horton”-style ad falsely accusing Sullivan, during his tenure as attorney general, of being responsible for the heinous rape and murder of members of a Cambodian family.

The lawyers for the Cambodian family sent a cease and desist letter to Begich, and he complied, albeit reluctantly, taking longer than necessary to pull the ad. Politifact gave it a “Pants of Fire” rating. Even Jon Stewart was outraged. Begich still hasn’t apologized.

Since then, not much Begich’s campaign has thrown at Sullivan—his residency, the Koch brothers-funded ads supporting him, his rich Ohio family that has given $700,000 to various pro-Sullivan super PACS—is really sticking.

But the race is far from over. As many as eight debates are scheduled. The first one is on Oct. 1, focusing on fisheries, one of the most complicated, contentious issues in the state. (Yes, all politics is local and all that.) And then there’s the ground game. National Democrats have deployed a small army up here: 90, at last count, scouring the state, knocking on doors. For various reasons—a late primary among them—the RNC has deployed only 11 staffers to the state.

Still, it’s unclear how much success the Dems are having. Absentee ballot requests so far favor Republicans. And from June 3 to Sept. 3, Democrats have increased their voter registration rolls by 741 voters in Alaska, while Republicans have increased 1,718.

But the secret weapon is Begich himself. In a huge state that’s basically a congressional district that demands retail politics, nobody does it better than Begich. When he’s here, he’s everywhere: forums, bingo halls, conservative talk radio shows. He’s known to carry birthday cards around with him. When he sees signs of a party, he’ll tell his staff to stop so that he can knock on the door.

On a recent Sunday, Begich was at a Hispanic get-out-the-vote rally in an Anchorage Mexican restaurant. The Hispanic population only makes up about 5 percent of all Alaskans. Still, he’s going to need every vote he can get. Democrats don’t have the equivalent of a Mat-Su in Alaska. They take their votes in small pockets where they can get them.

As Begich was wrapping up, I asked him how he planned to win. He said that since Friday, he had been at 25 or so events, and that he was going to continue the pace until Election Day.

“ This is how I’m going to win,” Begich said.