Dan Sullivan has been one of Alaska's U.S. Senators since 2015 — that's 11 years in Washington. He likes to show up in a Carhartt jacket and work boots, the regular-guy Alaskan. But the record tells a different story. Here are three things worth knowing.
1. Golf resorts for him, gas-money guilt trips for you
Dan Sullivan sells himself as a working-class Alaskan. Meanwhile, his campaign groups have spent more than $1.5 million at luxury hotels and restaurants since 2015 — nearly his entire Senate career.
Where's the money going? A Palm Springs golf resort where The Bachelorette was filmed. A Kiawah Island resort — even during a government shutdown. The Phoenician in Scottsdale, where rooms can run $9,500 a night. In early 2026, 92% of his food and lodging spending was outside Alaska. That's campaign money spent far from the people he represents.
And here's the part that stings: while doing all this, he was emailing Alaskans begging for $3, $5, and $10 to help him fill up his tank — while his campaign sat on $7 million in the bank. By early June, Alaska gas averaged $5.20 a gallon.
2. He held stock in Alaska fishermen's biggest rival
Sullivan calls himself a champion of Alaska's fishing industry. Yet he held stock in Mowi — the world's largest producer of Atlantic salmon and a direct competitor to Alaska's wild-salmon fishermen. The shares, which he inherited, were sold in August by a third-party manager, and he didn't report the sale until November, past the federal deadline — a violation of the STOCK Act. His office said he was unaware of the sale until weeks after the deadline.
Then there's Pebble Mine. Sullivan has a nearly two-decade record of advocacy for the massive mining project — one most Alaskans oppose because it threatens Bristol Bay, the world's largest sockeye salmon fishery. At a Zoom Q&A during the ComFish commercial-fishing conference, as he was signing off, a constituent asked why he broke his pledge to return money from Pebble's former CEO. "I gotta run. Thanks!" he said — and left.
A champion of the fishing industry doesn't hold stock in its biggest rival or push a mine that could wreck its best fishery.
3. He keeps getting caught bending the truth
When did it become okay for our leaders to just lie to us? Sullivan has a habit of stretching the truth — from parroting the false claim that Democrats want to give Medicaid to "illegals," to a PolitiFact file where four of his six rated claims came back Mostly False or False.
You can read the receipts at PolitiFact and FactCheck.org. If you can't trust him to be straight with you about the basics, it's fair to ask what else he's shading.
What it all adds up to
These aren't three separate scandals. They're three versions of the same thing: a senator who says one thing to Alaskans and does another when he thinks no one's checking. The regular-guy image, the fishing-industry champion, the straight shooter — each one falls apart on contact with his own record.
After 11 years, that gap between the pitch and the paperwork isn't a slip. It's the pattern. In 2026, Alaskans get to decide whether the costume still fools them.
