Alaska Republican leaders celebrate Trump’s victory

Alaska Republican leaders said they’re elated by Tuesday’s election results and hopeful they will create more opportunity for oil drilling and other development on Alaska’s federal lands.

Not only did Donald Trump win back the White House, but Republicans regained control of the U.S. Senate. That means both Alaska senators are back in the majority, increasing their ability to advance their agenda in Congress.

U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan sees the wins as good for Alaska.

“Those are bipartisan issues that we want to get done here — the King Cove road, ANWR, NPR-A,” he said at an election night watch party. “I mean things that are very bipartisan in Alaska, the Biden administration sought to shut down, successfully.”

Alaska voters opted decisively for the Trump ticket. With nearly all precincts counted, 55% of Alaska voters picked Trump while 40% picked Kamala Harris.

Alaska Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy also celebrated Trump’s victory. In a livestream Wednesday morning, Dunleavy said the former president was good for the state during his first term, and the governor expects similar priorities in Trump’s second term.

“He sees Alaska’s oil resources, our gas resources, our mining resources, our timber resources, our location on the globe, our military, as assets, not just for Alaska, but as solutions to the country’s problems,” he said.

The Biden administration has until Jan. 20 to try to carry out its Alaska policies. Just Wednesday it issued a decision on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge that infuriates development advocates. The Interior Department decided to open just 400,000 acres to oil leasing, the minimum required by Congress. The first Trump administration had proposed to open an area three times as large.

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski achieved major agenda wins under the Trump administration, including the law that requires oil leasing in the Arctic Refuge. But her relationship with Trump is rough. She voted to convict him after his second impeachment. Earlier this year she called him flawed “to his core” and indicated he lacks the character to be president. Trump has called Murkowski “disloyal” and in 2022 flew to Alaska to help promote a more conservative challenger.

Murkowski said they can still have a productive term.

“If that just means I need to approach things in a different way, I will do so,” she said during a news conference on Wednesday. “But at the end of the day, regardless of how a given president feels about me, personally or politically, my job, my role, is to make sure that Alaska stands to gain, and that’s what I intend to do.”

Murkowski said with the Senate Republican majority, she could become chair of the Indian Affairs Committee and also chair of the subcommittee that holds the purse strings of the Interior Department.