Dan Sullivan wanted data centers on Alaska's military bases, and he said so. In February he told the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner that he had contacted top Air Force brass after they left Alaska off a list of bases open to data center developers. "I said 'Gentlemen, what the hell? You forgot bases in Alaska?'" Sullivan recalled, the News-Miner reported.
In April, the Air Force opened about 4,700 acres for data center leases at three Alaska installations, including Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. It held a virtual industry day for interested developers on April 23, the Current reports.
Then the checks started coming in.
$29,000 from one company's circle in five weeks
Between April 13 and May 15, seven people tied to a single data center utility developer — Twenty First Century Utilities, or TFC — and two related firms gave a combined $29,000 to Sullivan's joint fundraising committee, Sullivan Victory, which passed every dollar on to his campaign. The Alaska Current put the total at $58,000, but that counts each check twice: once when Sullivan Victory received it, and again when the committee transferred it to the campaign. Federal Election Commission records show one check per donor:
| Donor | Listed employer (FEC) | Check to Sullivan Victory | Passed on to Sullivan's campaign |
|---|---|---|---|
| Peter Corsell | Twenty First Century Utilities | $7,000 | $7,000 |
| Charles Hu | Saige Consulting | $7,000 | $7,000 |
| Kevin Crull | I Squared Capital | $3,500 | $3,500 |
| Aaron Kapito | TFC Utilities | $3,500 | $3,500 |
| Kenneth Nuss | TFC Utilities | $3,500 | $3,500 |
| David Roux | St. Brides Farm, LLC | $3,500 | $3,500 |
| Ross Berger | TFC Utilities | $1,000 | $1,000 |
Sources: FEC receipts for Alaskans for Dan Sullivan and Sullivan Victory, the senator's joint fundraising committee.
Corsell is TFC's managing partner and co-founder. He wrote Sullivan Victory a $7,000 check, and it reached Sullivan's campaign as the most one person can give a candidate — $3,500 for the primary and $3,500 for the general. Hu, of Saige Consulting, did the same. Saige is chaired by Corsell, according to the Current, and Roux, a former Oracle executive, has a "relationship" with TFC according to North Slope Borough documents the Current obtained.
The Current reports that, aside from Corsell and Roux, none of these donors gave more than $200 to any other candidate this cycle. Corsell's only other gifts it found were to two House Democrats. These are not longtime Sullivan backers. They showed up, all at once, right after the Air Force did what Sullivan had pushed it to do.
What TFC wants
TFC has a no-bid deal with the North Slope Borough — the local government for Alaska's far north — to plan a project the Current calls North Slope Power: a natural gas plant that could scale past 10 gigawatts, with a huge data center next to it at Prudhoe Bay. TFC's own planning documents estimate $13 billion for a first phase and more than $27 billion with a power line south to serve more data centers, according to the Current.
Two pieces of that plan run straight through Sullivan's world:
- The bases. In a proposal to the borough written in October 2025, months before Sullivan's push, TFC named a data center next to Elmendorf Air Force Base as a target, the Current reports — and listed working with "State of Alaska leadership" to attract data centers as a key step.
- The federal money. TFC's financing model leans on debt from the Department of Energy, which would also have a big role in permitting, according to the planning documents the Current obtained. That's where a senator's help counts.
The borough has already committed $5 million to the project and signed TFC to an exclusive partnership through 2027, the Current reports. On April 7, it raised Saige Consulting's contract by $9 million, to nearly $13 million. Charles Hu's $7,000 to Sullivan came about two weeks later.
The reception
The Current also found that Sullivan's campaign paid the American Gas Association in Washington for food and drinks on April 23 — the kind of payment campaigns make for a fundraising reception. That was the same day as the Air Force industry day for data center developers, and the same day Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy was in town to give a keynote at the Data Center World convention. It isn't known whether any of the TFC-linked donors attended.
Sullivan's campaign and office didn't respond to the Current's repeated requests for comment. Neither did Corsell or TFC.
A habit, not a one-off
Sullivan's record with money and favors is long. When two men named in Jeffrey Epstein's files wrote him checks, it came months after he voted to keep those files sealed. He sold up to $100,000 of his family's stock in his brother's company after closed-door COVID briefings.
And he's not alone in his party on data centers. We've documented eight Republicans who spent the past year helping the data center build-out, taking the industry's money, or both while three out of four Americans turned against having one nearby.
Mary Peltola's campaign put it this way: decisions about data centers "need to be made by the Alaska communities who will be impacted, not Lower 48 corporations or self-serving politicians like Dan Sullivan."
What the filings show
Senator Dan Sullivan pressed Air Force leaders to open Alaska's bases to data center developers, and the Air Force did in April. Between April 13 and May 15, seven people tied to Twenty First Century Utilities — a firm planning a multibillion-dollar gas plant and data center on the North Slope, and which had named Elmendorf Air Force Base as a target — gave $29,000 to his campaign through his joint fundraising committee, according to FEC records. Neither Sullivan nor the company would comment.
Source
EXCLUSIVE: Data center utility execs maxed out donations to Dan Sullivan — Lauren Windsor, The Alaska Current, October 30, 2026
